


Glass Houses

by Misaya



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alzheimer's Disease, Angst and Feels, Angst and Romance, Art, Bittersweet, Doubt, Established Levi/Erwin Smith, Established Relationship, Fanart, Feels, Heavy Angst, Inspired By Tumblr, Levi-centric (Shingeki no Kyojin), M/M, Married Couple, Memories, Memory Loss, NOW A BOOK!, Older Characters, Sad, Sexual Content, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:58:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 38
Words: 74,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4008493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misaya/pseuds/Misaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“And you are?” he asked, his voice on edge. Erwin sighed as he glanced at the cherry numbers on the digital clock on the nightstand. Levi hadn’t even made it to ten. It was worrying. Terrifying. Their lives, once intertwined so seamlessly, had started to diverge and unravel, the slim tendrils of a failing memory forcing them apart.</p><p>With the patience of someone who has done this many times before, Erwin smiled quietly, and cupped the side of Levi’s face in one broad palm.</p><p>“I’m Erwin Smith, and I’m your husband.”</p><p>-----------------</p><p>I must apologize if anything in here is inaccurate or poorly portrayed. I cannot claim to have firsthand experience with Alzheimer's Disease, or writing about it, so I apologize in advance if something comes off as insensitive or just blatantly wrong.</p><p>*Story/book only has 36 chapters. Additional chapters are inserted for the purpose of showcasing fanart [Ch. 26 & Ch. 38] w/ permission of artists.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First Thoughts, Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caxxe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caxxe/gifts).



> Written to: [Seagull - Port Blue](http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=xxGGqWes2_8)

Levi is perfect. Almost terrifyingly so. But mornings like this, it's easy to forget that.

Erwin, through some miracle, through some witchcraft, had woken up earlier than Levi this particular morning. It was probably the latter, if he was being quite honest. The sun was still coming up over the horizon, painting the sky with pastel pinks and golds, light filtering through the gauzy curtains that hung in their bedroom. Levi had picked them out at Bed, Bath, and Beyond; they'd gotten curtains from one of their mutual friends from their wedding registry, but Levi had all but gagged upon unwrapping the large gift box, and had promptly put the curtains away for another, much rainier, day.

Erwin took this opportunity to admire the way Levi slept, his cheek pressed against Erwin's chest, his body half on top of Erwin's even though it was a full-sized California king bed and there was more than enough room for the both of them to stretch out rather comfortably. In fact, there was quite a large gap between Levi and his edge of the bed, and Erwin sighed as he tried to nudge Levi over a bit.

Levi was having none of it, and just when Erwin deemed he had enough room to breathe comfortably, Levi slingshotted back into position, clinging to the fabric of Erwin's undershirt with his hands. A little furrow appeared between his eyebrows as he nuzzled his face into the side of Erwin's rib cage, and Erwin wondered what Levi was dreaming about.

He smiled. Levi's subconscious probably provided him a wonderland, a universe full of freshly ironed linen sheets and Earl Grey tea, a world without filth or insects or crime or another dirty of the sort.

_Levi is perfect, but there is a crack in the plaster of their bedroom wall where he'd vigorously slapped a mosquito into submission with an old newspaper. Erwin had been impressed. Also slightly terrified. More terrified when Levi turned to him, the carcass of the mosquito clinging to the personal ads, the newspaper still held aloft in his clenched fist like the spoils of war._

This particular day was a federal holiday, and Erwin planned to spend it doing absolutely nothing. It was a rare occasion when both he and Levi got to stay home and lounge around in their pajamas, watching television shows other than the news, maybe going out to see a film or to go to their favorite restaurant. What with Levi being a biochemistry professor at the local university, and with Erwin's job as the vice president of the marketing branch of Sina Technology, they had very little time to spend with each other.

It certainly was different, Erwin mused as he carded his fingers through Levi's silky black hair, when they were younger. When life was simpler. Back then, before they'd gotten married, sure, they hadn't had as much wealth as they did today. Dinner would be plates of spaghetti with pre-made tomato sauce from a jar, cheap wine from boxes, sitting at a dinner table in a cramped apartment that already had cracks all over the walls. Dates would be seeing what good, cheap movies they could rent from Redbox and kicking back on an already sagging couch with a bag of popcorn.

That had been when Erwin had still been a manager at the company, back when Levi was still a TA and PhD student, when they had to worry about rent and tuition and other worldly concerns like that. Though they have much more financial breathing room these days, worry still clouds Levi's face when he opens their bills sometimes, sitting at the roomy kitchen table and furrowing his eyebrows at the balance sheet of his checkbook and telling Erwin that they really need to stop leaving the air conditioner on.

_Levi is perfect, but he runs his hands through his hair and across his face when he's calculating their taxes, smearing trails of blue and black ink across his cheeks. Erwin likes to tell him that his mascara is running, and is often given a vicious smack with the financial calculator for his troubles. He grins now, wincing at the remembered pain, and thinks, not for the first time, that adopting a child might curb some of Levi's more imperfect tendencies._

Levi stirred, and Erwin stilled his hand on his head, waiting with bated breath. Eyelashes fluttered, dancing shadows cast across the bridge of Levi's nose, before Levi muttered something and pushed himself out of the fog of sleep. He blinked groggily at Erwin, squinting to make out his features.

_Levi is perfect, but his vision isn't, a fact only exacerbated by the minuscule numbers in data tables he's constantly looking at in order to keep up with the biotechnology industry. Levi is perfect, but he's started to need reading glasses because he can no longer hold the newspaper at arm's length and make out the figures in the stock market. Levi is perfect, but time takes its toll on us all, and not even Levi can stop the relentless march of age._

Erwin thinks Levi's glasses, black framed and rectangular and currently folded on the nightstand, make him look distinguished. Intelligent. Gorgeous beyond belief.

Levi thinks they make him look old, and tries to wear them as little as possible.

"Good morning, Levi," Erwin said, smiling.

"Morning," Levi muttered, sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, squinting at the digital clock. "I can't remember the last time I woke up after seven."

"It's been too long," Erwin agreed, rubbing the other man's back soothingly. "I thought we'd have a lazy day today, unless you have other obligations."

Levi flopped back down on the bed, spreading out his limbs and stretching like a contented cat as he looked up at the ceiling, which was currently awash with the soft golden light of early morning. "I want to go to Urth," he said after a while. "I don't feel like cooking and getting the stove all dirty. I just cleaned it yesterday."

"Okay," Erwin replied.

_Their wedding cake had come from Urth Caffe, a cafe that specialized in organic coffee and tea. It had been berry creme, Erwin remembered, the dabs of whipped cream thick and rich against his tongue, strawberry slices sweet and plump, sandwiched between layers of sponge cake._

_Levi is perfect, but there is a picture of him on their wedding day, laughing, with a smear of frosting at the corner of his mouth. Levi grumbles about it, frequently tries to convince Erwin to replace it with another photograph of him if he really must, but Erwin quite likes it._

When they finally managed to crawl out of bed a few hours later, Erwin waited patiently in the car, warming it up while Levi locked the front door of the house. Levi lowered himself into the Toyota, rubbing his hands together to warm up, as Erwin reversed the car out of the driveway and pointed it in the direction of the highway.

It wasn't until they'd passed the exit for Adams and Vermont when Levi asked where they were going.

Erwin smiled, chalking it up to drowsy conversations, and he reached over to take Levi's hand in his own. The slim gold band on Levi's ring finger was smooth against Erwin's fingers, and he squeezed gently, further proof of existence. Erwin cannot remember a single day, a single hour, a single moment when Levi had taken off his wedding ring.

Levi is perfect, almost terrifyingly so. But when he sits next to him, hand calm and peaceful in Erwin's, it is easy to forget.


	2. The First Time, Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW

The first time they had sex, Erwin recalled, had been the first time either of them had really made love. Neither of them had been virgins, no, that time had long come and gone, those firsts experienced with other lovers in other beds in other times. But this had been the first time where Levi hadn't hidden his face in the pillow or the sheets when he came, smearing sticky and molten across the planes of his stomach; this had been the first time when Erwin had choked out an "I love you" and meant it.

Erwin wondered now, as Levi rode him in long, lazy strokes, when the other man had gotten so beautiful. It must have happened when Erwin hadn't been looking. He was still wearing the green and grey sweater vest he'd worn to the university that day, the wool rucking up to his chest, his nipples bitten swollen and red from the kisses Erwin had laved on them earlier. Sweat shone at the hollow of his throat, strands of dark hair slipping into his eyes as he tilted his head back, bracing his hands on Erwin's knees, hips rocking forward on their own. His cock sprang up, rosy and flushed, from between his thighs, weeping sticky onto Erwin's stomach, the fluid gleaming against tanned skin in the late light of dusk.

Erwin thought his husband looked particularly like a fallen angel, wings clipped, sinking back to earth with every sigh, every breath, every moan, every minuscule shift of his hips that had him pulsing velvety hot and slick around Erwin.

"Like a glove," Erwin murmured, reaching out with one hand to cradle the side of Levi's face. Levi's hands tightened around the knobs of Erwin's knees before releasing, Levi leaning forward into the touch, eyes closed, lips tightened breathless around a cut off moan of Erwin's name. His hands, long fingers and milky skin gleaming in the low light, tangled themselves in Erwin's hair, tugging him close for a kiss. Another. Another. Moans swallowed and returned with equal fervor.

Levi tasted like tea leaves, bitter and citrus and sweet against Erwin's tongue, and Erwin licked into the crevice of his mouth, tasting Levi's moans on his breath.

"I love you," Erwin murmured against Levi's lips.

It had been like this the first time, too. Levi had refused to say it first, had refused to bind himself to Erwin with three words, with three syllables, had refused to admit that he held any stock in the relationship whatsoever because they had been young. They had been unsteady, unsure of where the promises of tomorrow, and the next day, and the next week, would take them.

They had been young, and they had been glorious, burning out in the summer heat, cotton sheets slick with sweat and sticky mouths against sticky patches of skin. They had been like candles, melting wax with heated looks and touches and liberal doses of innuendo, burning until the late hours of the night.

Sex wasn't so much of a priority these days. Age had caught up, and libidos had burned out, leaving the sparks of passion to simmer into embers and coals, burning soft and constant in the pits of their hearts. But sometimes, Erwin mused to himself as Levi tried to curb a sob into the palm of Erwin's hand, embers ignited again.

_The first time Levi had said "I love you," to Erwin had been when he'd thought Erwin was dead asleep, slumped over the kitchen table, papers and charts spread out across the sticky Formica for a presentation he'd had the next day. Erwin had closed his eyes for a moment, laid his head down on his arms to try and stave off the pounding headache from the small figures and the bare fluorescence of the lightbulb overhead, when Levi had padded in to the kitchen, footsteps soft smacks against the linoleum. The footsteps had paused, and Erwin could almost hear the hesitation, before the footsteps resumed and Levi's hand was threading gently through his hair._

_"I love you, you know." Levi's voice had been low, almost completely masked by the incessant humming of the refrigerator a few feet away, but it had been more than enough. Erwin had had to bite back his smile as Levi gently coaxed him to bed._

Erwin groaned as Levi did something particularly dexterous with his hips that brought back cherished memories of the devastatingly ravaging twenty-six-year-old he had been. Levi had always been slim, but twenty-six-year-old Levi had had a thinness that was missing now, a thinness that had long since been filled out with proper dietary care and the soft plush padding of wealth. Erwin had been afraid to cling too tightly, then, half-afraid as Levi rode him energetically; he remembered spending what seemed like hours marveling at the way his cock disappeared between Levi's thighs, remembered spending what seemed like years clinging to Levi's hips and whispering praises and curses and pleas as Levi ground himself relentlessly into the cradle of Erwin's thighs, hungry, desperate to consume and take.Now, when Erwin curls his fingers around the curves of Levi's hips, he is no longer so worried about leaving bruises that Levi will wince at whenever he reaches to button his jeans.

Now, Erwin can't help but marvel that Levi changes ages halfway through the day; he wakes up thirty-eight, complaining about his joints aching, and somewhere in the middle of the day, he regresses, returns to the fervor of his twenty-year-old self. Insatiable. Undeniable. Desperation and fulfillment and the promise of more, more, more. 

Levi leaned forward, burying his face into the crook of Erwin's neck, and though he cannot hear it above the soft schlupping of Levi's thighs slick against his own, Erwin felt his husband mouth "I love you" against his pulse as he wrested his orgasm from him, streaks of lava against his skin. 


	3. The First Meeting, Again

Couples like to tell stories about the first time they meet, about how they just knew they were The One for each other. Erwin and Levi were not one of these couples; in fact, the first time they had met at a Starbucks down the street from the university, Levi had all but threatened to sue Erwin for tripping and spilling a freshly brewed latte over the papers Levi had been grading. A copious amount of napkins and pleas and apologies and a dash of downright groveling had been just enough to convince him to march off in a huff, the coffee-soaked papers clutched in a hand wrapped in paper towels.

For them, it had taken them several coincidental meetings to even start to occupy corners of each other's minds.

Their second first meeting had been at a talk at the university that Erwin had been invited to speak at, and he remembered the heat of the yellow lights glaring down on him at the front of the auditorium, his hands fiddling with the edge of the podium because he had been nervous. He'd managed to pull off an adequate presentation, covering all of his points with relative ease, and all would have gone well had he not, at the last moment before exiting the stage, knocked over his glass of water, spilling it all over the wood and his note cards. He had gathered them up, dripping awkwardly through the gaps of his fingers, and as he'd left the stage, face burning in embarrassment, a fistful of paper towels had been shoved in front of him as he walked back to his seat.

He had barely been able to make out Levi's features in the relative dark of the audience, but he'd had a feeling it was him. He'd accepted the napkins gratefully, and had sat down in his chair a few rows behind, watching the silhouette of the man a few rows ahead.

_Their third first meeting had been at a bar, like many good first meetings are. It had been raining, Erwin recalled as he gazed at Levi's vague reflection in the foggy glass of the subway. The glass was smudged with fingerprints, blurring the sharp contours of Levi's face into submission and softness, like the way he looked stepping out of the shower, bare limbs cloaked in steam and shrouded in towels. It had been raining, and Levi had stomped into the bar, his hair dripping, the collar and creases of his dress shirt limp and dejected._

_He had plopped down two seats away from Erwin, placing his elbows heavily on the stained oak of the bar, and had tossed a handful of singles at the bartender when he brought him a tumbler of whiskey. Neat. Erwin had admired that about him, had admired the way his Adam's apple bobbed in his throat as he lifted the glass, brought it to his lips, and took a few healthy sips._

Couples like to tell stories about how the first time they meet, the words "I love you" are already making their wending ways to the tips of their tongues.

_"Oh, it's you." Levi had set his glass down on the bar, had angled his body toward Erwin's. "Here to spill your drink on me again?"_

_Erwin hadn't known what to reply, had instead concentrated his attention on the rim of his Heineken, rubbing his thumb absentmindedly over the chilly green glass, surreptitiously sneaking glances at Levi in the mirror behind the bar. The other man drank whiskey neat, not watered down, something that Erwin still admired and appreciated. Though he allowed Erwin to take control in the physical part of their relationship, Levi was still a man, something that he never let Erwin forget and something that Erwin still adored and appreciated._

_"No, you look wet enough," Erwin had finally remarked. Levi's hair had been dripping onto the bar, and he noted that the other man had been starting to shiver, the rain from outside clinging to his skin, the whiskey not enough to warm him._

Levi shivered now, and Erwin unconsciously reached over, wrapped an arm around him. Levi had never been one for public displays of affection, but he wriggled into the crevice of Erwin's arm anyway, and Erwin marvelled, not for the first time, how well they seemed to fit, two halves of a whole.

_"We broke up." Erwin had been startled out of his thoughts, turning to the other man, who was staring down into the glass of amber liquid he held tightly in his hand. But the bartender was away at the other end of the bar, serving other customers, and there was no one else he could possibly have been talking to. "I told him it wasn't going to work out." Erwin had nearly spat out part of his third Heineken._

_At the silence that stretched out, the other man had looked up at him, the expression in his eyes wavering somewhere between angry and uncertain. "What? Do you have a problem with that?"_

_"No, not at all," Erwin had sputtered. "I was just surprised."_

_"Yeah, I suppose you don't meet too many queers in your line of work," the other man had snorted, tossing back the last of his whiskey. Emboldened by the alcohol, Erwin had shrugged, thrown caution to the wind._

_"Well, that makes two of us, doesn't it?" he'd asked, and it had been Levi's turn to choke on the Glenfiddich he'd been drinking. Coughing, eyes watering, he had turned to Erwin, expression curious, vulnerable._

_They had exchanged names, mobile numbers, and Erwin remembered spending the better part of a week wondering about whether or not he should send a text, give a call, what he should say. Erwin had been fully expecting Levi to never use his number, to stash it away in a coat pocket and lose it in the laundry, so he remembered being more than shocked when his phone vibrated with a text from Levi the following Saturday._

_"So, are you going to call me or what?" The text had been demanding, snarky, sassy. It was exactly how relationships weren't supposed to start._

_Erwin had called him for the first time that night, inviting him out for dinner. They had gone to a small hole-in-the-wall Italian place down the street from the university that had cheap spaghetti carbonara and even cheaper wine, and they'd spent hours talking over guttering candles about themselves. Or, at least, Erwin had spent hours talking, and Levi had spent hours listening. There were still some things that Erwin didn't know about Levi, like whether he preferred dark or milk chocolate, or what his opinions were on academic integrity policies in higher education. Being with Levi was a new, and sometimes unfamiliar, experience, and Erwin hoped that he could learn forever._

"Do you have time for a coffee before you have class?" he asked now, and Levi turned his attention away from the passing neighbourhood scenery outside. "My flight doesn't leave for another few hours, assuming the train doesn't get delayed."

Levi looked up at him. He was wearing his glasses this morning, and Erwin wanted to kiss him, wanted to fog up the lenses with their intimacy. But that was something that Levi wouldn't particularly be pleased by, especially not in this setting.

"Not really," he said after a moment. Erwin just barely had the good graces not to pout as Levi pulled out his phone from his pocket to check the time. It was 8:14 AM. Levi tapped his thumb over the fingerprint sensor, unlocking it, and began typing an email. Erwin stifled a roll of his eyes. Sure, he was well aware that Levi was busy also, but he wouldn't be seeing him for a week due to a work conference in Orlando.

_That first date, Levi hadn't taken a glance at his mobile once. It had been something that Erwin admired and respected, the way the other man gave Erwin his full attention, the way he stared at Erwin as though there were no other place he'd rather be, as though there were no other thing he'd rather be doing._

"Oh, you know what," Levi muttered from beside him, drawing him out of his memory. Levi clicked his phone off, stashing it back in his pocket and turning back to Erwin.

"What's up?" Erwin asked, gaze tracing over the crow's feet that had started to form around the corners of Levi's eyes. They were barely discernible, but Levi spent ages in front of the bathroom mirror, leaning over the counter and glaring critically at himself. Erwin was of the opinion that Levi wore them well. Levi disagreed.

"I can just cancel class," Levi said. "Today was just laboratory techniques, anyway."

Erwin grinned and reached over for Levi's hand. Levi allowed him to take it, their fingers wrapping together, the titanium wedding band on Erwin's hand cold and smooth against his skin.


	4. The First Proposal, Again

Technology had its downfalls. Adults were encouraged towards sedentary lifestyles and desk jobs, students were driven to whip out their mobiles at lunch instead of socializing with their peers and during class when the teacher was particularly boring. Levi had, in fact, garnered a reputation at the university for being deadly accurate with a piece of chalk if he caught someone grinning at a SnapChat under their desk, a reputation that had not diminished with his need for glasses. Erwin had sat in on a few lectures of Levi’s, getting lost in the figures and diagrams on the PowerPoint slides, and had been more than impressed to note that his husband was famous for having the eyes of an eagle, a blatant misperception these days, and the arm of a baseball pitcher, something that Erwin and their bedroom wall could certainly attest to. The student sitting next to him had leaned in and whispered, almost proudly, that the last time Professor Ackerman had caught him looking at a Vine, he’d been able to taste chalk for three days.

But there were definitely benefits to technology, too, a concept that Erwin relentlessly promoted in his job. It made people’s lives easier (Which college student these days couldn’t survive without a microwave?) and it certainly allowed people to get in touch in ways that they otherwise wouldn’t have. It was nearing midnight in Orlando, and Erwin could just barely make out the lower curve of Levi’s mouth as the other man rolled onto his side to stare at the softly glowing screen of his laptop.   

“Hey, Lee,” Erwin said, grinning at the screen, where he could make out the soft gleam of freshly brushed teeth as Levi smiled back at him. “How was your day?”

“It was busy,” Levi murmured, flicking strands of dark hair out of his eyes to give Erwin the full force of his attention. “I went to research after your flight took off, and I guess they must have changed the door passcode on me, because I couldn’t get in. I had to get one of the undergrads to let me in. It was that annoying one, you know, He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named."

“Hmm, that’s odd,” Erwin agreed, chuckling a little. “It’s unlike you to allow a certain Eren Jaeger to assist you.” Granted, he didn’t know too much about university policy on research labs or whatnot, but perhaps the passcode had been changed for security reasons or something of the sort. “But I’m glad you were able to get in. Wouldn’t want your precious mice dying of neglect or anything like that.”

Levi snorted, and Erwin took a moment to admire the full curve of his lower lip as it shaped itself around a laugh. “I told you not to speak his name, remember? At any rate, the boy kills the mice quite well all by himself, thank you very much. It appears he’s got a natural aptitude for it. He enters the laboratory, banging his skateboard against the walls, rumpling up all the lab coats, leaving dirt all over the floor, and the mice just drop dead of shock.” Levi cradled a pillow to his chest, eyelids starting to droop as he let his gaze roam over the pixels of Erwin’s face. 

“How was your day?” he asked, his syllables slow and soft, rounded with fatigue. “Orlando nice?”

“Could be better,” Erwin admitted. “Lots of old folks, and kids on holiday. Disneyland, you know.”

“It’s Disneyworld, you know,” Levi mumbled, snuggling his face into Erwin’s pillow. “Disneyland’s the one in Ana –“ he yawned – “Anaheim,” he finished, rubbing an eye with a loosely curled fist. The light from the display gleamed off the slim gold band he wore around his finger. Erwin fiddled with the matching titanium one he wore.

* * *

 

_The first time he’d proposed, he recalled, Levi had said no. Flat out. He’d thought he’d planned it perfectly, too, taking him out to one of their favourite French restaurants, even going so far as to order two flutes of Veuve Clicquot that they hadn’t exactly been able to afford in anticipation of Levi’s impending acceptance._

_The waiter had appeared bearing the flutes of champagne, a ring nestled expertly in the bottom of one, its shape disguised by the low lighting of the restaurant and the bubbles in the frothy champagne._

_“What’s this?” Levi had asked after the waiter left. “Erwin, what the hell is this?” Erwin grinned absentmindedly now, remembering the panicked look that Levi had held in his eyes, his hands shaking, the frothy champagne spilling over the glass._

* * *

 

“What are you laughing about?” Levi muttered irritably, turning his head to the side to glare halfheartedly at the screen.

“Nothing,” Erwin murmured reassuringly. “I was just remembering something funny.” 

* * *

 

_“Will you marry me?” he had asked, quite sincerely, he’d thought. Levi had all but thrown his glass of champagne over Erwin._

_“No,” he’d hissed, eyes darting wildly around the restaurant. “No, no, no. You can’t just spring this question on me. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.”_

_The waiter had seen the interaction play out, and he’d come up apologetically after Levi had fled to the sanctuary of the men’s room, patting Erwin comfortingly on the shoulder and reassuring him that they’d take the Veuve Clicquot off the cheque and that he truly hoped Erwin would have better luck next time._

* * *

 

“The conference is at Epcot this year,” Erwin said now. Levi, who had been on the brink of falling asleep, stuttered back awake, gazing at Erwin from under lowered lashes, shadows fanning across his cheeks. “You should have come. We could have gone wine tasting.”

“I don’t much like wine,” Levi mumbled, his words slurred, his breathing soft and even. Erwin liked the way he sounded right before he fell asleep, lovely and tender and sincere. “It’s always so sour, and it makes me turn red.”

“That’s right, isn’t it,” Erwin murmured, wishing he could reach out and stroke the curve of Levi’s cheek with the pad of his thumb. Levi’s face softened while he slept, his skin creasing against the pillowcases or the fabric of Erwin’s shirt where the torso met the sleeve, leaving red marks across the cream of his skin that he vigorously rubbed away in the mornings, and which Erwin wished he wouldn’t.

* * *

 

_The second time Erwin had proposed hadn’t been successful, either. It had taken him a while to recover from the shock of the first rebuttal, and for a while, he and Levi had spun away from each other like repelling magnets, coexisting and simultaneously pointedly unaware of each other’s existence. The second time Erwin managed to gather up enough courage to present Levi with the golden band across the dinner table, Levi had stared at it for a moment, his spaghetti-laden fork halfway to his mouth._

_“How much did it cost?” Levi had asked, quietly. “It looks real.”_

_“It is real,” Erwin had all but snapped back. “Don’t you think this” – with a broad, sweeping gesture across the table, knocking over his water glass quite by mistake in his intent to encompass their lives – “is real? Is that what you’re saying, Levi?”_

_Levi hadn’t replied, had lowered his eyes to his plate before putting his fork down and standing up. Erwin had been beyond anger, had stomped outside, slamming the front door behind him, had gone to the corner store and spent the last few dollars in his wallet on a small bottle of tequila and a packet of cigarettes. He had drowned his anger with the burn of alcohol and the sting of ash in his throat, had stumbled home, barely managing to slot his key into the front door._

_He had woken up the next morning with a massive headache, his tongue cottony in the crevice of his mouth, a blanket draped over him. Levi had been nowhere in sight, and it had taken all of Erwin’s willpower not to just stuff the ring down the garbage disposal, throw it out the window, something, anything, to take his mind off the smooth, taunting gleam of pure gold that was burning a hole in his pocket._

* * *

 

“Am I keeping you up?” Erwin asked now, his voice soft, soothing. “I wouldn’t want you to miss out on any beauty sleep.” 

“Oh, shut up,” Levi mumbled, his eyelids drifting closed again, his mouth slack around his words. “Jus’ hadda long day, s’all.” His eyelashes fluttered as he struggled to keep himself awake. 

“You can go to sleep, you know,” Erwin said gently. “We can talk tomorrow.”

His words fell on deaf ears; Levi had already fallen asleep. The furrow between his eyebrows had disappeared, Erwin’s pillow clutched firmly to his chest, his lips slightly parted around the last word he’d said. It was quiet in Erwin’s hotel room, the only sound from the faint hum of the air conditioning and the equally faint, reassuring waves of Levi’s exhalations.

* * *

 

Erwin had almost not accepted Levi’s Skype call that day. He had almost pressed decline, had almost wanted to ignore it entirely. He’d had half a mind to go down to the open bar two floors below and get trashed.

But the vinyls of their lives had started to realign again, the tracks on the record spinning them irreversibly towards each other, and Erwin had been powerless to stop it. Drawn like a moth to the flame, the tide of his affections had started to flow in again, pulsing roughly against the cliffs of every line of defence he’d thrown up in an attempt to keep Levi off his mind, eroding them away. 

_“What is it?” he’d asked, brusque. Curt._

_Levi had looked nervous, scared, a look that he didn’t wear well. Erwin had felt guilty, but his pride kept him from showing it. Levi had been fiddling with his hands, curling them into fists, lacing his fingers together, rubbing one hand over the other, and Erwin’s gaze had been drawn to the slight gleam of gold that decorated one hand, visible even in the dim light of the room Levi had been in._

_“Okay,” Levi had said, his voice barely a whisper. “Yes. I will."_

_Erwin had been shocked. More than shocked. But then Levi had looked up, charcoal eyes burning in the intensity of the truth._

_That had been the first time Levi had admitted he was scared. Terrified, in fact, because while it was all well and good to date someone and live with someone and make love with someone, marriage was a different thing. It was unfamiliar, it was frightening, it was intimacy to a level that Levi wasn’t comfortable with._

_“We’ll take it slow,” Erwin had said, ideas of going to the hotel bar forgotten as he laid down on the bed, keeping the laptop open. The conversation had gone on until the early hours of the morning, until Levi had eventually fallen asleep, his hand thrown across his face in abandon, in surrender._

“I love you,” Erwin said quietly now, but his voice must have been a little louder than he intended, because Levi stirred, tilting his face towards the screen again, the soft blue light of the screen pulsing across the planes of his cheekbones. His eyes were curved into slight arcs, crinkling at the edges, the corners of his mouth playing up into a slight smile that Erwin was delighted to be privy to.

“Good night, Mr. Ackerman,” he said softly, barely whispering the words as he set his laptop gently on the nightstand and curled into bed, allowing the soft susurrus of Levi’s sighs to soothe him into sleep.

* * *

Erwin woke up the next morning to find the video camera still running, and he sat up, yawning and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as the golden light of early morning filtered through the gauzy white curtains of the room.

Joggling the laptop out of sleep, he found Levi looking at him, his cheek pressed against the pillow, hair still messy and uncombed, the light grey with a dawn that hadn’t yet arrived.

“Good morning, Mr. Smith. Time to get up and get dressed.”

Erwin grinned and complied.

 

_Call ended 10 hours 33 minutes 42 seconds_


	5. The First Fight, Again

Erwin sometimes wondered how his relationship, his engagement, his marriage to Levi was in any way, shape, or form, feasible. Not that he had doubts or regrets about it; far from it. He was of the opinion that meeting Levi had been the turning point in his life, his quarter-life crisis that had catapulted him headlong into a universe he wouldn’t have otherwise been given the honor of participating in.

The couple sitting in the aisle across from Erwin’s airplane seat in first class was one of those brother-sister couples. You know the ones; the ones who meet in college because they’re members of the same co-ed fraternities, the ones who go to the same spin class on Thursday evenings, the ones who’ve grown so much like each other that even their physical resemblances start to merge into one. They were chattering to each other about their plans for their upcoming vacation in Hawaii, what foods they wanted to eat, what beaches they wanted to go to in the hopes of finding the best surfing location or the most colorful fish to snorkel with. Erwin smiled as he watched them surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye. They were tall, tanned, vaguely Norwegian-looking, blonde hair and ice blue eyes and the same long-limbed profile that made them look as though they’d both come fresh out of an Ikea catalogue. They were happy and young and in love. They were volatile. Easy to laugh, easy to fight, and just as easy to kiss and make up. 

_Levi was not one to easily forgive, and he was definitely not a man that tended to forget. Erwin smiled in reminiscence, remembering the day he’d come home to find his shirts strewn across the apartment, slung haphazardly every which way over every available surface, cuffs unfolded, collars uncreased, buttons dangling by threads._

_“I’m not your maid,” Levi had muttered, glaring angrily at him from the couch where he’d been sitting, grading papers. “You’re a grown man, pick up your own damn clothes instead of just taking them off and leaving them all over the floor.”_

Erwin had spent the next twenty minutes or so picking up his shirts, grumbling curses under his breath the entire time, but Levi had been right, and they’d had a rather enjoyable evening afterwards, if he recalled correctly. His life with Levi had been full of rather enjoyable evenings, Erwin mused, and the inferno of their initial amour had burned down into a slow, steady glow.

But he and Levi had been that couple once, too, Erwin thought to himself as the flight attendant came by to take his drink order. They had once loved each other so much with a passion deep, intense, furious, that they had almost torn each other apart in their fervency, in their desire to embed themselves into the core of the other’s soul. And, much like two souls who desperately want to be entwined and yet separate, they had fought. Bitterly. Agonizingly. Tongues sharp and words barbed as they lashed out at each other and tried to free themselves. 

Their first fight had driven Levi to tears, Erwin recalled now. Levi certainly wasn’t an easy person to incite significant bouts of emotion from, and he had been so surprised by it that he’d lost the train of thought to his argument.

But good Lord. What exactly had that fight been about? Erwin racked his brains, trying to remember. Money? It had certainly been a pressing topic at the time, when they barely had two pennies to rub against each other, when McDonald’s was practically gourmet and a welcome change from the Cups of Noodles that lined their pantry shelves. No, it couldn’t have been that, Erwin mused to himself as he took a sip of his iced water. Money was something Levi grumbled about, muttered about under his breath, but he’d never been one to yell at the top of his lungs about their financial affairs. Their apartment then had been tiny, a cracker box squeezed in between other generic cracker boxes. The walls were thin, cracked, unstable semblances of privacy. No. It couldn’t possibly have been about money. 

It certainly hadn’t been about suspicions of cheating. Levi had been, and still continued to be, the man who occupied the forefront of Erwin’s mind, a fact that had been especially true for the past – oh, what was it? fourteen? yes – fourteen years now. His one and only among the many who had littered the leaves of Erwin’s past with their false promises and uncertain vows. Levi made it a point to speak truthfully, honestly, to the point of hurting with his bluntness, but Erwin had appreciated it. It made the whole guesswork that went into a relationship nonexistent. He didn’t try to hide behind half-truths and white lies of omission, something for which Erwin was truly grateful.

Oh, right. Erwin remembered as he watched the couple across the aisle wrap their arms around each other and cuddle under the blue blankets the airline provided.

* * *

 

Levi had accused Erwin of smothering him. His spirit was an eagle, independent, feathered, tugging at the constraints that Erwin had unwittingly set upon him, and he pulled at the tethers of their relationship, to no avail. Erwin had taken him to a fundraiser Sina Technology had been having earlier that evening, and he had thought that Levi had been doing quite well. He’d been surrounded by the wives of other executives in the company, chattering and drinking glasses of fizzy champagne and lemonade, and he had thought the evening had been exceptional. Levi had thought otherwise, clearly, and had spoken not a single word to Erwin .

“What’s wrong, Levi?” he’d asked wearily after they walked through the front door of their cracker-box apartment, reaching up to loosen his tie and shrugging off his coat.

“No more company events. No more picnics, or business dinners, or mixers. I’m never going to one with you ever again.” Levi’s hair had been standing up on end, ruffled from where he’d run his hands through his hair during the cab home, tugging at the roots in irritation. It looked like he’d been through a dryer, hair flying all over the place with static cling, and Erwin had laughed.

_That had been his first mistake._

“You think this is funny?” Levi had shouted at him, eyes wild. “Do you think this is a fucking joke, Erwin?” Levi’s tie had been unkempt, his collar limp, the linen of his shirt sporting wrinkles.  

“I thought it went fine,” Erwin said, sobering up. Levi’s tone was frantic, serious, and Erwin hadn’t been inclined to test him any further. “Why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you?”

“I don’t belong in that world,” Levi had huffed, loosening his tie and letting it fall to the floor in an uncharacteristic display of untidiness. “It’s too much, Erwin. I can’t spend hours talking to people I don’t know about things I don’t care about, about things that don’t matter. I can’t do it, okay? You think I’m like you, and all charismatic and that other bullshit, but I’m not, Erwin. I am nothing like you!” That last sentence had been shouted across the entry hall of their apartment, and for an instant afterwards, there had been complete silence, Erwin and the neighbours holding their collective breaths under the force of Levi’s anger. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Erwin asked when he’d finally managed to force the words out. “We would have left earlier.”

“No, we wouldn’t have,” Levi had hissed. “You were so busy networking and chatting away to all your new friends” – that word came out as a snarl – “that it was almost like we came separately. Thank God there was an open bar.” Levi hadn’t been slurring his words, not that Erwin could recall, but then again, Levi drunk and Levi sober weren’t that noticeably different. 

“And those women,” he had continued. “They were all over you. Or did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

Erwin had sputtered, indignant. “Levi, women aren’t my type. You know that. I’m dating you, for fuck’s sake!” _This had been his second mistake._

Levi had snorted, turned his back on Erwin, but it hadn’t been quick enough for Erwin to miss the glimmer of tears on Levi’s lashes. “Yeah, well, you certainly didn’t try to discourage any of their advances,” he’d muttered, heading into the bedroom and slamming the door rather decisively behind him.

Erwin watched the couple across from him banter playfully over what in-flight movie to watch as he absentmindedly fiddled with the napkin the flight attendant had given him, coarse between his fingers. He wondered how long it would take for them to realise that relationships weren’t all milk and honey, that sometimes they were acid and vinegar. 

His third mistake had been when he’d come into the bedroom five minutes later. Levi had been sitting on the edge of the bed, shoulders shaking, face buried in his hands, the catches of his breaths rending through the silence. 

“Don’t look at me,” Levi had hissed, his voice catching on a sob. “Don’t you dare pity me. Just leave me alone.”

Erwin had ignored the warnings thrown his way, had crept towards the bed, had sat down on the edge nervously before reaching out and drawing Levi to his chest. “Do you think,” he’d said, Levi’s tears cutting wet grooves into the linen of his dress shirt, “you would allow me to be alone with you? Together?”

_It had been his mistake and his redemption, his error and his saving grace._

* * *

 

The plane landed, jostling Erwin out of his memories and the couple across the aisle out of their impromptu cuddling session. Erwin reached into his pocket, taking out his phone and clicking it on, tapping his foot anxiously while the plane taxied to a stop.

When he looked down at the screen, he was a bit surprised to see that there were no texts from Levi, informing him that he was headed to the airport now, that he was at the airport looking for the parking, that he was by baggage claim waiting for him. He frowned. It was unlike him.

He disembarked from the plane, nudging past the Norwegian couple, strode briskly into the terminal, gathered his baggage, all the while keeping an eye out for Levi’s slender frame. After fifteen minutes or so had passed, he clicked open his phone and rang Levi, his mind jumping to the worst conclusions, as minds are prone to do sometimes. Levi in a car crash. Levi being drugged, abducted, sold over the border. Levi being murdered. The last one was almost too much, and he swallowed roughly, trying to ignore the itch in his throat. 

“Hello?” Levi’s calm voice filled his ear, and Erwin’s worries flooded away. He wanted to pinch himself for being so foolish.  

“Hey, Levi, are you here?” Erwin asked, setting his bag down by his feet and stretching. The Norwegian couple had just disembarked and were in the process of looking for their suitcases, hands glued together. Inseparable. But for how much longer?

“Am I where?” Levi’s voice was confused.

“My plane just landed,” Erwin said, after a pause. Certainly he’d told Levi what day he was coming back. Certainly Levi had made him double and triple check the details of his trip, the hotel room, the flight number, the airline, all the other little necessities that Erwin tended to forget.

“Oh, God.” Levi sounded frustrated. “Crap. I thought today was Wednesday. I’m so sorry. I can be there in an hour if traffic isn’t too bad.”

“It’s fine,” Erwin said. “I’ll just take a cab home. Put it on the company’s dime for traveling expenses.” 

“I’m sorry, I really am.” Levi hastened to apologize. “I could have sworn...” He trailed off, and Erwin had to strain to hear his next sentence.

“Please don’t be disappointed, love,” Levi murmured, quietly, barely a breath, barely a whisper. 

Erwin swallowed back the words he had been going to say, substituted them. “I’m not disappointed, just mad,” he said. An inside joke. An attempt to be light-hearted, and Levi chuckled halfheartedly at his efforts. 

“I know. I’ll see you soon.” And then, almost as an afterthought. “I love you.”

_His fault, his blunder, his salvation._

“Yes. I love you, too,” Erwin murmured into the phone before ending the call and heading outside to flag down a taxi.


	6. The First Kiss, Again

Levi, as brave as he is in the face of adversity (see: invading mosquitoes and other such vermin), is not above screaming in impressively high pitches whenever Erwin managed to coerce him into watching a horror movie together. Tonight was one of those nights, and Erwin had guilt-tripped Levi into watching The Babadook with him, using the airport terminal incident as leverage. Watching Levi wrap himself into a blanket fort, from which Erwin had been blatantly not invited, curling up defensively in preparation for the movie, Erwin almost felt bad about it.

“I heard it wasn’t even supposed to be that scary,” Erwin reassured him as he leaned over the coffee table, scooping up the slim silver remote to their Apple TV. “It’s more of a psychological thing, from what I’ve heard.”

Levi glared at him from behind the blankets he’d swaddled himself in. Erwin rolled his eyes, in good-natured exasperation, before clicking ‘Play.’

As he’d predicted, and come to expect, not even twenty minutes into the movie, Levi had flung himself on top of Erwin, latching onto him like a particularly clingy mollusk, and had proceeded to watch the film with half of his face peeking out at the screen from where it was pressed against Erwin’s neck. He was vibrating, shivering, and Erwin patted him reassuringly on the back in a futile attempt to soothe away his jitters.

“That was not ‘more of a psychological thing,’” Levi snapped after the ending credits had started to roll. “No jump scares, my ass. You lied to me!” Half of his face, the half that had been pressed tight into Erwin’s chest, sported red pressure creases, and Erwin reached up to smooth them away with his thumb. Levi swatted his well-meaning hand away. “You’re so mean,” Levi huffed, sitting up and allowing Erwin to finally catch a much-needed breath of cool, fresh air. “I forget to pick you up at the airport once, and this is what I get for it? Cruel and unusual punishment. I won’t be able to sleep for a week, at least.”

“Well, if that’s the case,” Erwin said, sitting up straight and rolling out the knots in his shoulders and neck, “perhaps I should just make you tired enough to go to sleep.”

It was cheesy, an attempt at flirtation that wasn’t even veiled with a single layer of subtlety. It sounded like something a particularly awkward fraternity boy might say, or something one might hear in a film of the more pornographic variety. Levi stared at him for about a half second before he rolled his eyes and smirked.

“Oh, Mr. Smith,” he cooed, making his voice breathy and batting his eyelashes very badly at Erwin. “I’m afraid I’m going to fail this class, isn’t there something, anything I could do for extra credit? Hmm?”

Erwin laughed, swatting him playfully on the arm as Levi crawled over him, pinning him to the couch, his knees boxing in Erwin’s thighs, his back arched. “You’re incorrigible, you know that?” he asked as Levi leaned forward to catch his mouth in a kiss.

* * *

When Levi called him a few days later, at 3:02 P.M., the whispered tone of his voice had Erwin thinking that perhaps Levi was going to initiate some sort of phone sex. It would certainly have been unlike him. Levi had a particular fear of saying anything explicit over the telephone waves, a fear that he’d justified triumphantly to Erwin recently, waving the newspaper in front of Erwin’s nose over his morning toast.

“NSA. I fucking called it, didn’t I?” he had crowed, slapping the newspaper down and nearly knocking over Erwin’s glass of orange juice. “They’ve probably got all your voice clips in their archives and they’ll use it for your next background checks, you mark my words. You see if you get promoted ever again.”

Erwin had rolled his eyes, brushed away the newsprint two inches away from his nose, and had gotten promoted the very next week.

“Hey, babe, what’s up?” he asked, nestling the phone between his shoulder and his ear while he finished up the presentation he was working on. After a few moments during which he could only hear Levi muttering something into the mouthpiece, he cleared his throat, sitting up straight, clasping the phone to his ear. “Levi. Hello?”

“Erwin,” Levi hissed, his voice muffled. “There’s someone in the house.”

Erwin’s mouth went dry, his heart pulsing violently in his ears. Panic cut crimson and metallic through his throat, and he took a deep breath, trying to rationalize. Every instinct in him was screaming at him to get home as fast as possible, to protect, to save, to care.

“Why didn’t you call the police?” Erwin asked, throwing stuff haphazardly into his briefcase and heading towards the door, the phone pressed to his ear the whole time, even as he was fishing out his car keys from the pocket of his slacks. “I’m coming home right now. Just…just stay with me, Levi.”

* * *

_Their first kiss had come as something of a surprise, for all parties involved._

_It had been raining, then, too, and Erwin had answered the insistent ringing of his doorbell to find Levi standing, dripping all over the grey carpet in the hallway, a bouquet of limp flowers clutched in his hand._

_“To what do I owe the occasion?” he’d asked, more than a little bit surprised as Levi pushed past him, petals cascading from the flowers’ heads to litter the floor with pearls of red._

_“Happy fucking half-anniversary,” Levi had all but snarled at him, shoving the bouquet into his arms. The flowers had been all but bald at that point. “You forgot.” It had been a statement, not a question, and Erwin had been embarrassed to admit that he indeed hadn’t been aware of the date, hadn’t been aware of the momentous occasion._

* * *

“I did call them,” Levi hissed. “They said they’d be here. If I die, I bequeath you my collection of novelty ties.”

“Don’t say that, please,” Erwin replied, trying to stave away the vision Levi had unwittingly created. “I couldn’t bear it.”

* * *

_“Sorry, I didn’t realize –“ Erwin had been interrupted by Levi reaching out, grabbing at the lapels of his dress shirt, and pulling him down for a kiss that was rough, unpracticed, unpolished. Their teeth had clicked, and Erwin remembered the flowers getting squashed between them, raining petals over their feet. When Levi had pulled away, face flushed, eyes bright, his expression had been cautious. Wary, even, and Erwin remembered thinking that Levi had looked almost scared of a rejection that Erwin hadn’t even been considering._

* * *

Rain beat down on the windshield of Erwin’s Toyota Camry as he pulled out of Sina Technology’s parking lot, the windshield wipers clicking in double time as he hunched over the steering wheel, trying to see past the water streaming down the glass. He had to consciously brake, forcing himself to drive slower than he normally would, despite every cell of his body screaming at him to go faster, faster, faster. But no, it wouldn’t do Levi any good if he spun out, or hydroplaned on the freeway, or got into an accident in his haste to hurry home. Thunder cracked its whip overhead, and Erwin tried to remember the last time he’d seen Levi.

It had been that morning, getting ready for work. Levi had been taking a day off from teaching and research, because he’d been tired, more so than usual, and Erwin remembered waving to him as Levi peeked out from behind the curtains of their living room, hair still messy with sleep. He had been wearing one of Erwin’s nightshirts, something that draped to his mid-thigh, and the circles under his eyes had been deep and pronounced, and Erwin remembered kissing him at the breakfast table, his lips landing at the corner of Levi’s mouth because the other man had grinned at the last moment.

“We’re like those old married couples that you see in movies. We’ve become those people,” Levi had said, hard-pressed to keep the laugh out of his voice. “What exactly have you turned me into, Mr. Smith?”

Erwin hadn’t answered that question, but as he drove through the slick streets in the direction of home, he hoped he’d still have the chance to.

* * *

When Erwin finally pulled into his street, a police car was diagonally in his driveway, and he was mildly reassured by the fact that there wasn’t an ambulance in sight. Surely that had to mean that nobody was hurt, right? Erwin tried, and failed, to comfort himself with that thought as he threw the car into park and hurried out into the rain towards the front door.

The front door was unlocked, and he pushed open, dripping rain all over the tiles in the entryway, tracking water in with every footstep.

“Levi?” he called. “You here?” He was about to step into the living room when a police officer, official badge and all, stepped out in front of him.

“Mr. Smith?” he asked, holding out his hand for Erwin to shake. “I’m Officer Hall, and we received a call earlier this afternoon from your husband regarding a home invasion?”

From over the officer’s shoulder, Erwin could make out Levi’s form on the sofa, a blanket wrapped tightly around him as he cradled his elbows in his hands. If it was possible, Levi looked even more worn and tired than when he’d left him this morning. Erwin longed to go over, to wrap him in his arms, to let him fall asleep to the steady rhythm of Erwin’s pulse, but he forced himself to turn his attention back to the officer in front of him.

“Er, yes, I think that’s right,” he said.

“We didn’t find any evidence of a break-in. All the windows and entries to the house were locked, and there’s nothing to indicate that there was anyone else in the house besides your husband.” Officer Hall looked at him, eyebrow quirked. Questioning. Curious. Looking for an explanation that Erwin couldn’t provide.

“He might have been a bit jumpy, it was kind of stormy today and we just watched a horror movie recently…” Erwin’s voice trailed off. It was a weak excuse, a flimsy cover, but Officer Hall just shrugged, leading him into the living room. He sat down on the couch beside Levi, reaching out to take his hand, fingers tight between Levi’s home, gold smooth against skin, palms flush and inseparable. Officer Hall and his partner, a strict-looking sort of woman with a tight brown chignon whose name Erwin didn’t catch, sat down across from them and went over possible protocols to follow in the case of a potential home invasion in the future. Erwin could barely understand them over the waves of relief that threatened to consume him. Levi was here, solid, firm beside him, and he squeezed his hand tightly to reassure himself of reality.

Levi grounded him, his island of calm in the turbulent flux of the universe, his rock in the riptide of panic and stress that sometimes threatened to overcome him. He escorted the officers to the front door, bade them good-bye, watched them pull out of the driveway and out of the street. Turning around, he came face-to-face with Levi, still wrapped in the blanket, eyes downcast, not meeting Erwin’s gaze as he let his forehead drop against Erwin’s chest, hiding his expression in the folds of Erwin’s shirt.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Levi murmured later as they lay in bed, Erwin having freshly showered, skin clean and warm against Levi’s. “You must think I'm insane. I guess I was just nervous. Storms. That stupid horror movie you made me watch with you. You get the picture.”

“Yeah, the child in that movie was particularly demonic,” Erwin agreed, stroking Levi’s thumb with his own where their hands lay between them, fingers laced. “If we get approved for adoption, I certainly hope the kid we get doesn’t look like that.” At Levi’s small laugh, he grinned, turning to him. “What? Is that too much to ask for?”

“No, I suppose not,” Levi said, turning onto his side to look at Erwin. After a moment, he spoke again. “I thought I saw someone in the hallway, you know, the one that goes to the laundry room. And I guess I panicked. I hid under the bed, but that would be the first place someone would look, so in retrospect, it was rather stupid of me.”  
“I’m glad you’re safe,” he said quietly, truthfully, reaching out and cradling the side of Levi’s face. “It looks like you can keep your novelty tie collection yours for a bit longer.”

The corner of Levi’s mouth tilted up beneath his thumb, and Erwin grinned back in response as he leaned forward to kiss him good night.

* * *

_“Well, that was, uh, certainly something,” Erwin had said, rubbing at the corner of his mouth where Levi had bitten him._

_“Shut up, I got the angle wrong,” Levi muttered, flustered and furious and beautiful as he glared at a point somewhere over Erwin’s left shoulder. He had been embarrassed, but there was a tinge of relief in his voice at Erwin’s lack of rebuttal. “It’s not my fault you’re so damn tall.”_

_“Well,” Erwin had said, shrugging as he headed to the kitchen to fill a glass with water for the now bald flowers, Levi trailing his steps, “you know what they say, practice makes perfect.”_

_He had seen Levi grin in the reflection of his kitchen window._

* * *

The next evening, while Erwin was carrying a load of linens to the laundry room, he set the basket down and looked up, coming face-to-face with his reflection in the glass panels of the door. He looked at himself for a moment, his mirror image slightly blurry, slightly unclear, dissolving into the barest shape of his silhouette as he took a few steps, examining.

He supposed it might be plausible, a storm, edgy nerves, Levi’s general paranoia about home invasion and domestic crime. But Levi had been…different the past few weeks. It was odd, uncanny, as though someone had shifted the furniture half an inch to the left and nothing felt proper anymore. He was still quintessentially Levi, but something was off, and it nagged at Erwin as he measured out detergent.

Well, it was true that Levi didn’t have perfect vision anymore, Erwin mused to himself as he tossed the sheets unceremoniously into the washer and set the spin cycle. But as he flicked off the laundry room light and headed out to join Levi at the dinner table, he couldn’t shake away the little voice whispering in the corners of his mind, murmuring that sometimes rocks crumbled, too, sometimes islands were swept away by the tide, never to resurface.

* * *

They had had fourteen years to practice, eight within the same confines of marriage, and Levi had all but perfected a technique for pinning Erwin to the bed and kissing the very soul out of him, stealing his breath and his thoughts and his words.

“You’ve gotten rather good at this,” Erwin gasped now, after Levi pulled away, lips red and swollen. “Are you sure” – with a glance at the clock; 11:43 PM – “it’s wise to be having sex on a school night?”

“Sorry, Mr. Smith,” Levi murmured, raising his voice a half octave. “I’m just trying to make sure I get in all the extra credit I can.”

It was stupid, it was cheesy, but Erwin couldn’t help but laugh anyway, his anxieties and worries drawn out with the searing heat of Levi’s kiss.


	7. The First Fall, Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little NSFW.

Spring break for the university rolled around, bringing with it the soft sweeping gusts of March, curls of cool air that swept Levi’s hair away from his face whenever he opened the windows to air out the house. The clouds were a soft fleecy grey, the barest hint of rain scenting the air with wetness. It was Levi’s favourite time of year, and Erwin privately agreed. The soft lighting, gentle in its darkness, illuminated Levi’s skin, turning him ethereal and beautiful, and Erwin enjoyed watching him from underneath lowered eyelashes as Levi got up, stretched, pushing himself out of bed carefully and slowly so that Erwin wouldn’t wake up before he was ready to. Even during holidays, Levi was early to rise, waking up with the sun, footsteps soft against the hardwood flooring so as not to wake Erwin as he tiptoed into the adjoining bathroom. The water turned on, the soft snick of glass sliding back as Levi slid open the door to the shower, and Erwin waited for approximately fifteen seconds before he, too, got out of bed and padded to the bathroom.

The hot water streamed over Levi’s skin, pale and growing flushed by the second, dark hair matted to his head as he stood under the spray. He moved over, automatically, like he’d expected it, as Erwin slid open the door to the shower and closed it neatly behind him.

“You’ll be late for work,” Levi murmured as Erwin pressed him against the smooth, slick tiles of the shower stall. “And I’m not young, anymore, in case you’ve forgotten.” This was in response to Erwin reaching down between Levi’s thighs, which were already slightly parted in anticipation, grasping his cock, limp and soft in the palm of his hand.

“It’s alright, we've got time,” Erwin murmured, reveling in the shiver that he could trace, his fingertips dancing across the knobs of Levi’s vertebrae. “We've got all the time in the world.”

He stroked Levi into a frenzy, whispering murmured sweet nothings against the side of Levi’s neck as he braced him up against the shower wall. Levi’s skin tasted sweet, clean, like oranges and a vague hint of soap, and as Erwin tilted his face up to gauge Levi’s expression, he was momentarily blinded with droplets of water running into his eyes. Levi had his face tilted to the side, eyes closed, eyebrows furrowed as he pressed his hips into the tight cradle of Erwin’s palm, gasping for breath. His features were wreathed in steam, no longer pale, no longer ethereal, but earthly, mortal, substantial.

As Levi choked out a strangled moan, spilling pearls across his fingers, Erwin remembered how easy, and how difficult, it had been to fall in love with him. Levi was diamond, beautiful and multifaceted, each face different and yet essentially the same. Levi was coal, dark and ashy, leaving trails of himself wherever Erwin looked, in the way the cans of soup in the pantry were arranged alphabetically, in the soft scent of linen and sandalwood that seemed to follow Levi wherever he went.

As he stroked Levi down, soothing now, soft and slow and steady, he wondered which Levi he preferred more.

* * *

_The night he’d met Levi for the third time, at the bar in downtown, the bottle of Heineken sweaty against his palm, had been the night that had cemented it for him. Levi’s admission, overt and hidden, had forced him to take a good look at the other man. There had been a certain vulnerability behind charcoal eyes, a certain softness that Erwin had suddenly had an aching desire to know more about._

_Falling in love with Levi had certainly been no easy task. There were mornings where Erwin had sworn he was the luckiest man in the universe, and, by the same token, there were evenings where words were thrown around like knives, double-edged and slicing sharp. Levi was mercurial. Unpredictable. He had hidden depths in his eyes, ones that Erwin wanted to dive into, ones that Erwin edged himself in one toe, one word, one kiss at a time, afraid to lose himself._

_Levi was at his most truthful, his most open, his most vulnerable in the early mornings, when he was just waking up. He clawed his way out of dreams the way most people try to extricate themselves from the clasp of their still-sleeping lover’s arms, cautious and careful. His eyes brightened when he sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, and looking down at Erwin when he thought Erwin might not be awake. Erwin was more than glad to be the victim of his scrutiny._

_He remembered, he’d woken up one morning with Levi curled up in his arms, legs tangled together, soft rhythmic breaths warm against Erwin’s pulse. Levi had still been ensconced deep in his dreams, and Erwin had spent what felt like hours studying him, trying to memorize, trying to absorb every aspect of the man he held in his arms._

_And then Levi had woken up, eyes obsidian, and Erwin’s breath had been taken away. He was submerged, he was sinking further and further into the mire of Levi’s eyes, and where he’d normally have been inclined to scream for a lifeline, where he’d normally have tried to struggle furiously to the surface, Erwin found that he was no longer afraid of drowning._

_It had happened slowly, his feelings creeping up on him and wrapping him in tendrils of emotion, strong in their intensity, confusion and clarity all at once. And then, all at once, Erwin realized that he’d fallen in love._

* * *

“You’ve got that look in your eye again,” Levi quipped now, swatting him lightly on the wrist with the morning’s newspaper. Erwin automatically lifted his fork to his mouth only to find that the silver tines had lost their already-questionable grip on the French toast in front of him. “What are you thinking about?”

“Oh.” Erwin laughed, suddenly a bit self-conscious. “I was just thinking about how I fell in love with you.”

“Oh, you didn’t fall in love with me right away?” Levi asked, smirking. “How could you not? I’m so charming and charismatic. And smart, and funny, and all that other stuff. Quite the catch, really. You’re lucky I’m old and past the age of beauty.”

“I still think you’re beautiful,” Erwin admitted, reaching over the table to take Levi’s hand in his own. Levi rolled his eyes, but allowed Erwin’s hand to stay.

“Only you would think that,” he said, but his eyes were soft.

“I’ll always think that,” Erwin promised bravely. “I bet you’ll be the most gorgeous person at the retirement home.”

Levi snorted, pulling his hand away before pushing himself away from the table and heading to the kitchen for a fresh cup of coffee.

* * *

_It had taken Erwin years to admit to the fact that he was gay. Apparently, it had taken Levi approximately two seconds._

_“Oh, I’ve always been gay,” Levi had informed him when Erwin had broached the topic. “I’ve known since I was a kid and I found myself making designs on the tallest sixth-grader in my elementary school.” He had smiled dreamily, his eyes soft and liquid as he delved into the depths of his past. “His name was Farlan Church, and I remember making a special Valentine for him at Valentine’s Day. Of course, you’ve got to bring cards for everyone in your class, otherwise it’s not fair, but I remember being heartbroken because he didn’t even look at it in class. Silly thing to be upset about, really.”_

_“Well, your first heartbreak is certainly a momentous occasion,” Erwin had replied, grinning at the thought of an even tinier Levi, a backpack slung over his shoulder, though he’d never say that out loud. “I’ll toast to that.” He’d topped Levi’s glass off with more cheap wine, and they’d clinked water-stained glasses and taken hefty sips. Levi’s face had been a softly glowing red._

_“And what about you?” Levi asked after he set his glass down. “When did you know?”_

_“You’re my first,” Erwin had said, suddenly shy, suddenly uncertain. Looking up, he remembered that Levi’s gaze had held consternation, a certain reserve that hadn’t been there before. He had cleared his throat, reached across the table for Levi’s hand. “But I’m sure about it. I’m sure about you.”_

_Levi had smiled, relief and gratitude etched in his eyes, and Erwin had wondered if Levi knew what he was doing to him. Perhaps ‘gay’ wasn’t the right word to categorize himself.  There was just Levi, dark eyes and dark hair and pale skin, his antithesis, his savior, his dissolution._

_He had entrapped him, crawling underneath his skin so smoothly and so subtly that Erwin hadn’t even noticed his approaches. Erwin had been possessed, obsessed, and he found that he actively enjoyed this particular form of captivity._

* * *

Erwin looked at the clock in the bottom right corner of his desktop monitor, wondering where Levi was. Since Levi was “on break” for the moment, he’d invited Erwin out to lunch in downtown. It was fifteen minutes past the time they were scheduled for, and Erwin couldn’t keep his eyes from drifting over to the screen of his phone, checking and rechecking to make sure he didn’t have any missed texts or calls. But there was nothing.

At twenty past, he sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, tried to stave away thoughts of Levi getting hit by a car or something of the sort. He’d go grey before his time if he kept thinking like this, he admonished himself sternly. And Levi would most likely call any second, saying that he’d been held up in traffic or whatnot –

The buzz of his phone nearly vibrating off the edge of his desk had him grabbing for it with an eagerness that was probably unwarranted.

“Sorry, sorry,” Levi said, sounding slightly out of breath. “I’m outside. Let’s go now, if you still have time?” His voice tilted upwards at the end, a question. A plea.

“Yeah, of course, I’ll just head down now.”

* * *

“I got off at another metro stop,” Levi explained over crab legs and large steaming bowls of garlic noodles. “There were delays ahead, or so the operator said, and I guess I just misjudged how far the previous stop was from your office.”

As Levi cracked a crustacean into submission, Erwin took a moment to study him across the table. He was wearing a cream colored sweater that accentuated the slight flush that had dusted itself across the planes of his cheekbones, black dark-washed jeans that had Erwin thinking back to their younger days. Levi pouring himself into skinny jeans that Erwin was rather appreciative of because of the way they accentuated the narrowness of his hips, the way they clung to his legs, the way they cradled the flesh of Levi’s bottom in a manner that was downright sinful. Denim fabric puddled in a dark pool next to Erwin’s bed, because sometimes Levi didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t wait to fold them. 

Levi’s eyes were dark, unreadable now, but there was a knife edge of panic in them when he looked back up at Erwin, a static pinpoint of shock and surprise. It was as though Levi had taken a look into the mirror, had seen the very depths of his own soul, had been terrified to realize that it didn’t have a bottom.

He looked like he was drowning, breath by breath, step by step, drawn irresistibly to the center of the whirlpool. It was a Levi that Erwin had never seen before, cracked amethyst, glimmers of fear snatched away before Erwin could study them farther.

It was the first facet that Erwin wasn’t sure he knew how to love, and it terrified him.


	8. The First Anniversary, Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Teeny tiny nsfw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this the turning point? I can't even tell but I have to say this is probably the most emotionally intensive work I've ever written (yes, I personally think this is a heavier story than The Father, but it's a free world and you're entitled to your own opinion)

Erwin had never been good with dates. Ask him to walk into a crowded room and learn everyone's name in fifteen minutes, and he could do that, no problem. But dates and figures tended to elude him, and constantly flew under his radar undetected most of the time. After the first month their landlord had threatened to evict them for not paying their power bill (see: Erwin had completely forgotten about the stack of bills in the wire basket on the kitchen table), Levi had, one particularly chilly midnight, come wandering out into the kitchen looking for Erwin only to find him grappling with the financial calculator, the sides of his hands streaked with ink and his hair standing up on end from all the times he'd raked his fingers through it. He had come up like a wraith, looking particularly ghostly underneath the harsh buzzing of the bare fluorescent lightbulb overhead.

_ "You can go back to bed, you know," Erwin had said, turning to smile tiredly at Levi, who was frowning down at him, limbs practically swimming in one of Erwin's old T-shirts, one that slipped off his shoulder, one that had holes in it and was cotton soft, its logo faded, from all the times it had been through the laundry. _

 

_ "I got cold," Levi had protested, moving Erwin's arm to slip neatly into the cradle of his lap. "And you look like you're having trouble."  _

 

_ Erwin had scoffed, pride getting the better of him. "I've never done an easier thing in my life." Levi had smelled of citrus, clean linen, the softness of sleep, a scent that seemed to have transcended time. Erwin found that, even now, he still loved to bury his nose in Levi's sweaters whenever he was doing the laundry.  _

 

_ "You're really hopeless at this," Levi had said, and Erwin had relinquished the calculator all too readily as Levi took it from him, tapping its keys rapidly, slipping the bleeding fountain pen from between Erwin's fingers and scrawling neat columns of sharp digits and figures across the bottom of the page. Erwin had wrapped his arms around Levi, pressing soft kisses to the junction of his neck and shoulder, watching absentmindedly as Levi sorted through the piles of bills that littered the sticky Formica table like snowflakes.  _

 

_ "I'll do the bills and stuff from now on, okay?" Levi had asked, his question more of a statement. "I don't know about you, but I personally like my showers hot."  _

 

_ "I could make your showers hot," Erwin had said, rather earnestly, and Levi had stared at him for all of two milliseconds before rolling his eyes and scoffing dramatically. He hadn't been able to hide the blush that had danced across his cheekbones, though, and Erwin had counted it a victory, even after Levi elbowed him vigorously in the sternum and told him to stop thinking about it.  _

 

* * *

Erwin had never been good with dates. As if to compensate for this apathy, Levi was uncannily skilled at remembering them. Erwin liked to swear that Levi could double as the country's historical archives; seemingly unimportant or irrelevant dates like half-birthdays, anniversaries of first kisses, of first promises, of first dates, were embedded solidly into Levi's mind. Some mornings, for what seemed like no reason at all, Levi would wake Erwin up with kisses and breakfast in bed, a rare indulgence that Levi normally never allowed because he considered crumbs in the sheets among the deadly sins. Erwin would lean up on his elbows, take a bite of toast, inevitably scattering crumbs all over the linens, while Levi tried not to wince and wished him a fervent "Happy Half-Birthday!" or "Happy Anniversary of the first time we kissed." 

 

Erwin had never been good with dates, but when he woke up this particular May morning and found Levi's side of the bed empty and cold, he was more than a little concerned. 

 

Sure, nine wasn't one of those BIG anniversaries, it wasn't in the first five, and it wasn't a multiple of ten. But nine was a neat little number, almost two handfuls worth of years of being married to Levi; three complete handfuls if you also wanted to count the time before they'd gotten married. Erwin thought that this was an achievement worthy of acknowledgment by no less than the White House, and probably the United Nations as well. 

 

It was their Pottery Anniversary, if one wanted to go by traditional standards. Erwin had been particularly tickled to discover, in an online search he'd done a few months ago, that modern gifts for the ninth anniversary were supposed to incorporate leather. His thoughts had jumped to handcuffs almost instantly, and he'd been a bit surprised to find his jeans growing the slightest bit tighter at the thought of Levi splayed out in bed, hands cuffed above his head to the wrought iron of the headboard, biting his lip and trying to hold back his moans. 

 

But no. Erwin had smiled fondly as he'd shooed away those thoughts. He adored Levi's touches and caresses during sex as much, if not more, than Levi enjoyed his, and he certainly didn't want to be the cause for Levi's certain complaints of joint pain after completion of the sordid deed. And Levi was right. They weren't getting any younger. 

 

He had ordered a leather satchel for Levi, a plain, deep walnut brown, with all manner of pockets for his keys and wallet and the other things that Levi liked to organize into his bags. The one Levi currently carried to the university every morning was starting to fray along the strap, the weight of Levi's laptop and textbooks becoming unbalanced throughout the day, depressing a shallow swollen groove into Levi's left shoulder that Erwin routinely massaged away before Levi went to sleep. When the package had come in the mail, Levi had been duly curious, but Erwin had managed to squirrel it away on the top shelf of his closet underneath some of his old university memorabilia, a place that Levi couldn't and wasn't inclined to reach. 

 

As he pulled it down from the shelf now, stroking along its butter soft texture with his thumb, he wondered where Levi could possibly be. 

 

* * *

_ The first anniversary they'd had after getting married had fallen just shortly after Erwin had gotten a promotion at work, a promotion that had turned out to be just a change in title alone. It had been their Paper Anniversary, Erwin remembered, and they had certainly been drowning in seas of bills, because rent and food and tuition and other such costs of living weren't exactly cheap.  _

 

_ Still. Erwin had recalled that day as being particularly heavenly. Marriage had changed Levi softly, subtly, and Erwin often found his new husband admiring the golden band on his finger during lulls in their conversations, while they were eating dinner, times when he thought Erwin wouldn't notice.  _

 

_ Levi had woken him up at a godawful hour far too early in the morning, piling him into the old, cramped Nissan with the sputtery engine they'd owned then, and then driving off, despite Erwin's protests that he was still in his pajamas and that it was far too early for anything to be open. Erwin remembered the spark of excitement in Levi's eyes, remembered the way he'd coaxed the old automobile on and off the expressway, remembered the way he'd parked it neatly, the tires crunching along the gravel of their destination.  _

 

_ "Come on," he'd said, a bag slung over his shoulder as he herded Erwin out of the car. The light had still been grey, Erwin recalled, because the sun hadn't risen yet; though he'd been well aware of the fact that no other sane people would be awake at this hour, he had still been slightly embarrassed by the old cotton pajama bottoms he was wearing, but Levi had been insistent, his smile almost like that of a madman's in its happiness as he took Erwin by the hand and led him up the soft grassy slope of the park in front of them.  _

 

_ "Good God, Levi," Erwin had mumbled, still half-asleep and nearly tripping over his own steps as he followed. "This is absurd."  _

 

* * *

Levi called around lunchtime, when he'd just finished lecturing. Erwin could tell; his husband still had that authoritative note in his voice, the one that he got whenever he was asking - well, more like demanding - that Erwin take out the trash, or pick up his socks, or call the gardener and get him to weed the rosebushes out front again. 

 

"Hey, Lee," Erwin said, closing the presentation in front of him and devoting his full attention to the conversation. "What's up?" 

 

"Did you think I forgot?" Levi asked, his voice playful, teasing, and Erwin let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. An irrational sense of relief overtook him, and he grinned giddily though there was no one there to see. "I unfortunately couldn't do the whole breakfast in bed thing today, I had to get in early. Eren texted me frantically that he'd accidentally let, get this, not one, not two, but fifty-seven mice out. Sometimes I swear that boy will be the death of me." Though by all rights he should have been irritated, Levi's voice held a little note of fondness that Erwin picked up on and that he was sure Levi would never admit to. "Anyway, I booked a table at Quince for seven, so I hope you can get out by then." 

 

Erwin almost gasped at this show of extravagance. Though they were certainly well off now, and could afford dinners like this that ran up three hundred dollar bills, he wondered how long it had taken Levi to get past his reservations about excessive spending. In the next instant, he felt guilty. He truly had thought Levi had forgotten, because he'd come to expect the same thing year after year, because there had been a few little oddities about his husband in the past few months that Erwin had noticed, that Erwin had started to be concerned about. 

 

His breathing easier, a tension lifted, Erwin grinned and told Levi that he was looking forward to it. 

 

* * *

_ The air had been crisp, a bit cool, and Erwin had shivered himself awake as Levi puttered about, removing things from a backpack that seemingly had no bottom. He had laid out a red-and-white checkered blanket, motioned for Erwin to sit while he pulled out Tupperwares of toast triangles, omelettes that were, miraculously, still warm, thermoses of coffee and orange juice. _

 

_ By the time he'd gotten everything set up, the horizon was stained with pink, light creeping up over the edges of the world. Erwin remembered that Levi's features had looked particularly glorious that day, a happiness and contentedness around his eyes that Erwin wished he'd had the presence of mind to capture in a photograph.  _

 

* * *

"I wanted it to be special," Levi explained now over candlelight and Italian food. "I know how much you like this romantic shit." 

 

Erwin laughed a bit at his crudeness. "Well, I think you've certainly succeeded with impressing me," he agreed over a forkful of panna cotta. Quince certainly wasn't an easy place to get a reservation at, and Levi hadn't even scoffed at the sommelier or flinched at the bill when it had come. 

 

"Happy tenth, Erwin. It's a big one," Levi said, pushing a box wrapped in aluminum foil towards him across the table. At Erwin's confused expression, Levi rolled his eyes. "It's supposed to be our Aluminum Anniversary, whatever that means." 

 

Erwin's mouth had gone dry, the soft sweetness of the dessert in his mouth turning almost unbearable. Surely he hadn't counted wrong. Surely he wasn't mistaken, was he? He quickly counted back. They had gotten married in May of 2006, and he didn't need a calculator to confirm the fact that 15 - 6 figured out to 9. 

 

"Uh, Erwin?" Levi was waving a hand in front of his face, looking concerned. "Are you okay? Do you need the Heimlich maneuver or something?" 

 

Erwin took a hasty sip of wine. "No, I'm fine. It's just...it's not our tenth anniversary, Levi." 

 

Levi froze. 

 

* * *

_ "Happy Paper anniversary, Erwin!" Levi had said, his face rapt and gleeful as he'd presented Erwin with an envelope. The sunrise had broken over the horizon, bathing the underbellies of the clouds with pink and gold, the light cascading over the planes of Levi's face and making him particularly angelic. Erwin had smiled at Levi's enthusiasm, at the way he'd been practically vibrating with barely-contained excitement while Erwin slid a thumb underneath the flap of the envelope and tore it open.  _

 

_ Inside lay a single business card, one that read _

_ "Erwin Smith: Director of Marketing, Sina Technology"  _

_ with his phone number and email address listed neatly underneath in a clean, serifed typeface.  _

 

_ "The rest are at home," Levi had started to explain, but Erwin had already pinned him to the blanket, He had tasted like sunshine and oranges and toast, and their silhouettes had merged into one as the morning sunlight crept wandering fingers across their laughing faces.  _

 

* * *

"We got married in 2006," Erwin said now, carefully. "I can check the marriage licence if you want to be doubly sure, but I'm pretty sure the well wishes cards we've probably gotten in the mail today can confirm it for you." 

 

To his credit, Levi recovered in an admirably short amount of time. "I suppose I've just been with you for so long that the years have started to blend together," he said, with an apologetic shrug. "Just be grateful I haven't gotten tired of you yet." 

 

"Trust me," Erwin said, smiling as he unwrapped the aluminum foil, crinkle by crinkle, his worry increasing with every shiny crease he uncovered, "I always wake up grateful to find that you haven't tossed me out like yesterday's newspaper." 

 

Levi had gotten him a watch, one in shiny stainless steel, and as Erwin slid it onto his wrist to admire the dark face and white numbers, he couldn't help but wonder exactly when, for Levi, the years had started to merge together. 

 

When he looked back at Levi across the table, to thank him for the gift, he found that the other man's expression frustrated, worried, terrified, flickering in and out of shadow. He reached over, murmuring quiet thanks, watching the silhouettes of their hands come together, evening candlelight creeping curious along the seams of their laced fingers. 

 


	9. The First Dream, Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is written to: Blood Bank - Bon Iver. You can listen to the "official" Glass Houses playlist on my [Tumblr](http://misayawriting.tumblr.com/post/120489493179/glass-houses-official-kind-of-playlist).

The English language was certainly an odd thing, Erwin mused to himself as he watched Levi sleeping. It was odd how we used euphemisms and strange sayings to convey thoughts and feelings that plain words wouldn't suffice for. It was a warm Saturday morning in early June, and Levi was lying on his side, facing Erwin, his body curled in on itself as though still trying to hide its secrets, even in sleep. 

The idiom 'let sleeping dogs lie' came to mind, and had been the central dogma in their relationship for the past few weeks now. They hadn't discussed Levi's lapse of memory, had skirted around the subject tentatively, their discussions pointedly avoiding the topic and thus forcing it into the forefronts of their minds. It was funny, Erwin thought to himself as he lifted a hand slowly, cautiously, gently brushing a few strands of hair out of Levi's face, how they danced around the subject careful and cautious; it was unlike them, because they'd always discussed everything together before. But that had been before, when they'd been Levi and Erwin, together, and this was now, when he was Erwin and he was Levi, warm bodies occupying the same space, distant minds diverging onto different wavelengths. 

* * *

_The first time Levi had slept over, he had been shy, uncharacteristically so. Erwin remembered that Levi had spent ages in his cramped bathroom, brushing his teeth with a vigor that Erwin had been sure would impress even the most stringent dentist. When he'd finally come out, he had tugged at the bottom of his black tank top nervously, worrying his lower lip between his teeth and not meeting Erwin's eye as he carefully slid under the worn covers beside him. They had been young, both in body and mind, and Levi hadn't mentioned the broken springs in the mattress, hadn't complained about the fact that the pillow Erwin had generously allocated to him had a rip in its pillowcase and didn't match the bedsheets at all.  _

_ Erwin remembered, with a certain fondness, that Levi had lain beside him, staring up at the cracked stucco ceiling, his breaths measured in staccato clip. His body had been rigid, as if afraid to move a single inch, jerking back every time the relaxing shift of his body into sleep brushed his skin against Erwin's.  _

* * *

Levi had no such inhibitions now. There had been warm summer nights in the past when Erwin had nearly had to get up and sleep in the welcoming cool porcelain of the bathtub, because Levi's sleeping body had been insistent on clinging to him, even as the roots of his dark hair grew damp with sweat, even as his face became flushed and rosy.  

But recently there had been another bedfellow, occupying the tiny gap on the mattress between them, wedging itself neatly between the hollows of their bodies, dividing them neatly into two. It was the secrets they didn't speak, the sleeping dogs that neither were inclined to prod for fear of getting bitten. Levi shifted in his sleep, mumbling something as he swam deep in his dreams, and Erwin wondered what he was dreaming about. 

* * *

_ "Are you alright?" Erwin had asked, quite concerned, after about fifteen minutes when the tension in Levi's body had yet to dissipate. "Is the bed too small or something?"  _

_ "No, I'm fine," Levi had replied, adamantly, but had then refused to offer any further explanation. His body had nearly been vibrating with barely-constrained energy, and Erwin had admired the restraint it must have taken to keep as stiff as Levi had been doing.  _

_ "Not tired yet, I take it?" Erwin had asked. His eyelids had been heavy, and he was sure his words had held round vowels and consonants slurred with fatigue, but if they had, he didn't recall Levi commenting on it. "Want to talk for a while?"  _

* * *

That had been a time when their words had flowed freely, a cascade, a waterfall, slipstreams of their consciousnesses drifting in and out of each other's. They had had an endless supply, a resource that could never be exhausted.

That had been a time when the bed was only occupied by their two bodies, intertwined and clasped tight together, no room for doubt between the steady pulses of their hearts. Secrets had been limited to surprise birthday presents, to unexpected visits at work, to much-welcomed late night massages in front of the staticky television set they'd had.  

The tapestries of their lives had woven each other together, each word, each sentence, each conversation a thread, a stitch, a panel, until one morning Erwin had woken up and discovered that he could no longer extricate himself without being rent apart in the process.  

But, he thought to himself now, watching the flickering of Levi's eyes underneath the fine skin of his eyelids, somewhere along the line they'd dropped a stitch or two, a dark gap in the middle of their existence together that he sincerely prayed they would be able to bridge. 

* * *

_ When Levi had nodded a cautious assent, Erwin had stifled a yawn and turned onto his side to study Levi's profile in the soft gleaming moonlight more carefully. Levi had tensed up even more, if it were possible, and Erwin had scoffed before nudging Levi into his arms.  _

_ "You can relax, you know," he had said through a mouthful of inky hair. "I'm not going to eat you."  _

_"No," Levi had said, in a small, cautious voice that endeared him to Erwin even more. It was exciting, invigorating, to know that he was the only one who would see Levi like this, a power trip that Erwin constantly had to remind himself not to abuse. "I don't think I'd taste very good. I'm all thin."  _

_ Erwin had laughed, pressing a kiss to the top of Levi's head. "I'm sure you'd be delicious either way. So tell me, Levi, what are you thinking about that has you up so late on this fine Friday night?"  _

* * *

Now, Levi's eyes were flickering frantically, his eyelashes twitching, and his eyebrows furrowed, his lips slightly parted around his blurry muttering. Erwin listened carefully, but he could no longer make out the words, could no longer understand what Levi's subconscious, unguarded in slumber, was trying to tell him. 

* * *

_"I was thinking about you," Levi said, shifting in the secure hold of Erwin's arms, twisting his body to look up at him. "It's kind of hard not to, being that we're going to sleep together."_

_ "Oh, are we?" Erwin had asked, teasing, because sex hadn't been a first that had happened for them yet, but he'd been touched that he'd been at the forefront of Levi's mind. It had been a time when he'd been unsure where they'd stood with each other, where he'd been afraid to push at the boundaries for fear of driving Levi away. Levi had been, and still was, a person who preferred solitude and rainy days, fragility and glass wrapped in strength and steel. And Erwin had been, and was, still honored that Levi had entrusted him with his heart, his soul, his spirit.  _

* * *

 

Erwin had been, and still was, determined not to let it break. And yet, somehow, he felt like he'd failed even that. 

As he watched, he became surprised to note that, somewhere in his dream, Levi had started to cry. It had been hard to see, especially because the bright rays of early summer morning light were peeping in through the gaps in the Venetians and blinding Erwin. But the silvery trails cutting slender swathes through the hollows under Levi's eyes could not lie, and Erwin reached out, inquisitive and afraid, to collect the fluid on the pad of his thumb. 

* * *

_"I was just thinking about what we'll be like, when we're old and disgusting and married," Levi had joked back, and just like that, he'd relaxed, going fluid and pliant in Erwin's embrace. "You'll have to wait until we get married to have sex, I'll have you know. I'm old-fashioned like that."_

_"Is that right?" Erwin had asked, grinning down at him. "I guess I'll just have to marry you sooner rather than later, then."  _

_ "By the time we get married," Levi had quipped back, "I'll be so old you won't even want to see me naked." But his eyes had been dancing, and his tone had been light.  _

_"Oh, somehow I doubt that," Erwin had replied.  _

_ They'd had sex with each other for the first time not even a month later.  _

* * *

Levi's breaths had started to come in harsh little gasps, sobs unfettered by the inhibitions of wakefulness, and Erwin found himself awestruck, horrified, helpless in the force of unconscious feeling. 

He also couldn't help but wonder if this was a common occurrence, couldn't help wondering how many mornings Levi had woken up drowning in his own tears, mornings where Erwin had still been fast asleep in the warm comfort of his own dreams. 

Erwin found himself guilty, and he had no idea how to attain absolution.

"Levi, wake up," he said, first a whisper, then a murmur, then a voice, firm, shaking Levi out of his nightmare with a startle. He looked up, eyes wet, eyelashes glimmering with tears that had yet been unshed, and Erwin found himself astonished by the gleams of raw emotion that Levi's eyes held. They were there for about two seconds before Levi regained control of himself, tucking away his secrets deep and dark and dwelling, before he wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, clearing his throat.  

"Do you...want to talk about it?" Erwin asked, tentative. Afraid. Desperate to know, desperate to be let in. 

Levi studied him for a moment, and Erwin held his breath. He could sense chinks forming in Levi's resolve, hair-thin and barely there. 

* * *

_Erwin had admired the way Levi slept, uninhibited, worn out with their conversations of their hopes and dreams and aspirations. He had told Erwin that someday he wanted to figure out a cure for addiction, that someday he wanted to have his own laboratory and a Ph.D after his name, that someday they wouldn't have to live in a place with cracks all over the walls and water stains on the ceiling because the people upstairs had a leaky bathtub that they couldn't be bothered to fix._

_ "If we're still together at that point," he had said, cautiously optimistic. "Getting established takes time."  _

_ "I can wait," Erwin had said with a little smile.  _

_ Levi had taken off his armor, tender flesh and hopeful soul underneath, and Erwin would be damned if he bruised it. He had admired Levi's vulnerability and Levi's strength. The sharp, abrasive personality that Levi wrapped himself up might have been an indication that he'd been hurt before, probably had been because it's far too hard to survive in this world without carrying a few scars along the way. But Levi had healed the cracks, glued them in and made himself stronger because of them.  _

_Kintsugi. It was a word Erwin had come across in one of his university-level GEs, about world culture. It was a method of pottery repair and a philosophy, filling in cracks with gold, to wear your wounds and your past with pride, because they had made you into the person you were today.  _

_ He had been willing to bet Levi had used 24-karat.  _

* * *

People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. It was yet another gem of the English language.

Its original meaning had to do with criticism, a reminder to people that they shouldn't condemn others if they themselves could not handle the weight of their retribution.  

But, Erwin wondered, as Levi opened his mouth to speak, what if you weren't the owner of the glass house, what if you were the one who had cast the stone from a fortress of boulder and brick, what if you had to turn away at the first sound of shatter because you were afraid to watch the crystal castle in front of you splinter clear and broken? Was there any idiom for that? If there was, he couldn't think of it. 

"I dreamt that you left me," Levi said now, his voice quiet, barely audible above the pounding of Erwin's heart. "I dreamt that one morning, I woke up, and you had been erased from my life. But I had all these memories of you, and I kept walking around the house, looking for a photograph, or your keys, but I couldn't find anything." 

He fell silent then, eyes downcast. Erwin reached out, tugged Levi close, inseparable, squeezing out doubt and dreams and nightmares from the spaces they occupied in the tense set of Levi's shoulders.  

"I'm not going to leave you," he said quietly. "You'd have to kick me out, change the locks, change your name and flee the country if you wanted me to leave you alone." 

Levi laughed, a soft, watery sound. 

After a few long moments of silence, Levi sighed, breath warm against the hollow of Erwin's throat. "Something's wrong," he said, finally. Quietly. Hesitation coated his words.  

"What do you mean?" Erwin asked. Here it was, the dogs and demons were awake and well and screaming to be acknowledged. He almost wished for a few more days, a few more hours, a few more minutes of oblivion, peace, ignorant bliss. He wanted to live in the fool's paradise that he'd spent the last few months residing in. 

"You know what I mean. Something's wrong. With me. And I don't want that turning to something wrong with us." 

Levi's voice was muffled against Erwin's skin, but the meaning was sharp and clear, and though he'd known it for a while now, it still hurt to hear it spoken out loud. 

The words poured out now, an inundation, a flood, a deluge. Levi's fears and prayers and hopes scattered out, and Erwin thought that if he listened hard enough, he would be able to hear the soft tinkling of glass in the spaces between Levi's words. 


	10. The First Confession, Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written to: Hello, I'm In Delaware - City and Colour.

The way Levi had described it, his words muffled into the hollow of Erwin's throat, his mind had started to feel slippery. Information slick, knowledge and memories blurring into the present if Levi wasn't careful to set them firmly in their place. His thoughts had become glaciers, and Levi had found that it had been harder to pin them down, that he had to crack through their icy surfaces to find firm purchase. 

It was no wonder people believed in demons, Erwin thought as Levi fell silent, his breaths filling in the spaces between Erwin's. What other explanation could there be for someone losing their memories, their lives, their thoughts and hopes and dreams? Demons ate away the fabric of people's lives, flames consuming and cutting hungry teeth through the tapestries of companionship, and people fell apart, the strings of a 'No Strings Attached' agreement trailing broken knotted from their hearts. 

* * *

_ The first time had Levi had admitted weakness had been during Erwin's first business trip. He'd been asked to go to Venice to network, to participate in a conference with Sina Technology's international partner, and he could hardly refuse. Things had been on tenterhooks with Levi, anyway, and he was unsure how far he was willing to take it, how far Levi was willing to let him go.  _

_ The first evening he'd managed to catch Levi on Skype five days into the two week trip, it had been a cold and grey afternoon back home. There had been glare in the laptop webcam, Erwin remembered that much, and he'd had to strain to make out Levi's features.  _

* * *

It had taken Levi's quiet acceptance and even quieter fear to drive Erwin to action. 

He sat down at the table in front of Levi now, a notepad in his hand, a pen in the other. 

"What are you doing?" Levi asked, the muffin he'd been eating frozen halfway to his mouth. "It's Saturday morning. I've never seen you this eager to do your taxes before. Where's the calculator?" He craned his neck, as if the calculator might be hiding in Erwin's shadow. 

"No, nothing like that," Erwin said, rolling his eyes and stealing a chunk of lemon poppyseed muffin. "I just want to ask you a few questions." 

Levi scoffed. "What, writing an article for the school paper?" 

"Just think of it like an interview." 

* * *

_ "Hello, dear," he had said, teasing. "And how are you this fine day?"  _

_ Levi had taken a deep breath. "Could be better," he had admitted after a moment, and he shifted, blocking out the grey light from outside, the laptop's soft glow illuminating the hollows underneath Levi's eyes.  _

_ "Oh, is that right?" Erwin had asked, turning his full attention to Levi. "What's wrong?"  _

* * *

On his college-lined yellow notebook, Erwin had made a table, a big straight slash down the middle of the page. Levi watched him, half-curious, half-amused, as Erwin jotted down a few phrases on the left-hand side of the page. He tilted his head, trying to read it upside down, but Erwin's scrawl was messy, and Levi often joked that his husband should have been a doctor. 

"Okay. Are you ready?" Erwin asked, after the left side of the page had been sufficiently covered with his words. Levi nodded in assent, absentmindedly wiping up a few crumbs from the tabletop with a napkin. 

"When did you first say you loved me?" 

Levi looked up, the folded napkin going slack in his hand, the crumbs skittering across the tabletop. But Erwin looked as serious as he possibly could in the tattered tank top that he wore to sleep, looked as grave as he possibly could with crumbs littering the corners of his mouth. 

"Please, it's important," Erwin said, his voice softer, pleading, almost begging. "You're the only one who knows." The words left unspoken fell on the table between them - and if you forget, that will be gone, too - and Levi curled his hand into a fist, knuckles going white, napkin crumpling in his grip. 

He took a deep breath, forced his fingers to relax, allowed the napkin to fall to the tabletop in a wisp of white. "October 17th, 2000." He waited while Erwin scribbles down the date. "You were asleep at the kitchen table because you had a presentation the next day, and I had to practically carry you to bed." 

Erwin smiled, remembering the soft hum of the refrigerator, Levi's soft footsteps, his even softer words as he'd run slender fingers through Erwin's hair. 

* * *

_ Levi had opened his mouth, closed it, thought about it for a moment. "I miss you," he had said, the words mumbled, barely audible across the seas of time and distance.  _

_ Erwin had been shocked by the admission. Even when they were together, it had felt like Levi was allowing him to be there, as a form of goodwill rather than any specific desire to have him.  _

_ "What have you done to me?" Levi had said, his voice curious, his eyebrows raised. "You've corrupted me with your sentimentalities. I'm not used to it."  _

* * *

"The first time we met?" 

Levi laughed. "Do you mean the time you spilt your coffee all over me? You almost gave me second-degree burns." 

Erwin smiled back at him, his pen poised over the paper. "Sure, that time." 

Levi thought for a moment. Erwin hadn't been really expecting an answer, especially since he himself didn't even consider it their true 'first meeting,' so when Levi replied, it came as a bit of a shock, and he couldn't help but wonder if it were true. 

"April 14th, 1999." 

Erwin scribbled it down. "Jesus, I can't believe I've known you for that long." 

"Don't take the Lord's name in vain. It's right there on the list of big sins, like murder and coveting your neighbor's wife." Levi was grinning. Erwin couldn't help but smile back. 

"It's a good thing I can't covet my neighbors' wives, then." 

* * *

_ "I miss you, too," Erwin had said, a truth he hadn't even realized. The flight over, the hotel, the gondolas and the canals of Venice, had been exactly what he'd imagined in his future when he was younger, but as he wandered around the metropolis after business dinners or meetings, he hadn't been able to put a finger on why it had felt so empty.  _

_ It had been this, he had realized then as Levi waited expectantly for him to continue. His younger self had imagined places far flung from the tiny town he'd grown up in, had imagined luxuriant hotels and exotic foods and designer airplanes; his younger self had itched to leave and never look back.  _

_ But he had finally grown up, and the charmed dreams of his younger life had lost their holds on him. He had finally found a reason to stay.  _

* * *

 

"What about the first time we had sex?" 

"I was waiting for you to get to this," Levi replied, a laugh in his voice and his eyes. "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist. In fact, with the way you carry on in bed, I'm surprised you don't know this one for yourself." Levi took a sip of his coffee reflectively, thinking back to his past. "February 15th, 2000," he said after a moment. 

"Seriously?" Erwin jotted down the date and then looked back up at Levi. "You mean to tell me we could have had our first time on Valentine's Day, and we completely blew by that opportunity?" 

Levi laughed; Erwin sounded almost offended. "Well, Valentine's Day sex is so cliched, anyway. I didn't want us to turn into 'that' couple, you know, the ones who only have sex on special occasions like Valentine's or Christmas or the Fourth of July and then ignore each other for the rest of the year."

Erwin scoffed. "No chance of that, I'm afraid." 

Levi smiled fondly. "I remember thinking that first time that you were going to kill me. You could practically murder someone with that monster you call your dick. If I recall correctly..." He stopped suddenly, trailing off, the words hanging heavy in the silence. 

And here it was, the demon they'd thought they'd exorcised, full-fledged in its acknowledgment, back again and as omnipresent as ever. The monsters under their beds and in their closets had reemerged, violent and roaring and screaming for their utmost attention, and no amount of silver bullets or holy water would drive them out. The monster had crawled beneath Levi's skin, rooting itself deep in his suspicions and his fears, preying off the essence of his soul. And Erwin, for all his good intentions and all his righteous anger, was powerless to stop it. 

He was no god, he was no angel, he was no priest. He was just a man who found that he could barely stand beneath the weight of his love's confession. 

* * *

Once the door had been opened, once the monster had clawed its way out of the proverbial closet and been acknowledged, it was impossible to cover up the stain its inky shadow had cast like stones across the smooth lake of their relationship. They jumped in together, diving beneath the surface to try and collect the pebbles of doubt before they sank to the bottom and buried themselves deep and dark and solid in the murk. 

They hold their breaths for days and weeks and months and years, and just when Erwin thinks they're safe to break through to the surface and take in the air again, he looks down at his reflection and finds it spattered with black. 


	11. The First Vow, Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the timeline is confusing (I'm confused a bit by it myself). This chapter takes place approximately 1.5 years ahead of the last chapter, which is why the wedding suit is referred to as "ten and a half." I apologize for any confusion!
> 
> Written to: Hello My Old Heart - The Oh Hellos

It had become something of a tradition in their household for Levi to wake up on Christmas morning, head down to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, and find that their living room sofa had been buried under a veritable mountain of presents. 

This particular Christmas morning was no different.  

Erwin, who had been waiting for Levi to wake up, almost vibrating with barely-restrained excitement, eagerly tugged him downstairs the instant Levi's eyes opened. He sat him in the little niche he had so generously left on the couch, told him firmly to stay put while he went to make coffee. 

He wasn't surprised when Levi followed him into the kitchen a scant two minutes later; in all the years that Erwin had known him, Levi was insistent that he make his own coffee, claiming that he liked it a particular way, with a very precise amount of cream and sugar and that he was sure if he allowed anyone else to make it they'd miss it up. 

Levi stopped. "Oh, is that a Keurig?" he asked, rubbing his eyes with the sleeves of his nightshirt and taking a closer look. "What happened to the Mr. Coffee we had?"

* * *

The first birthday that Erwin and Levi had celebrated together had been October 14th, 2000, Erwin's twenty-sixth. It had been three days before Levi had said "I love you" for the first time, and erwin wondered now if the somewhat elaborate birthday celebration Levi had planned for him had been his practice run, a way to calm his racing nerves. 

Levi had woken him up with kisses and the warm smell of dark roast coffee, its rich aroma tempered with the hazelnut-flavored creamer that Erwin liked. Erwin had gone downstairs to find a small stack of rectangular boxes set by the best plate they had, the only one that didn't have cracks or chips around the rim, which had had a tall towering pile of French toast stacked on it, bathing in a puddle of syrup. 

"Hold on, hold on," Levi had said, excited as he flew back into the kitchen, returning with a lighter and a single candle that looked as though it had come out of a rather abandoned packet of birthday treats. He had stuck the purple and white swirled candle carefully into the center of the top piece of toast, lit it with a flourish that made Erwin smile in spite of himself. 

"Happy Birthday, Erwin!" he had said, eyes bright and nervous, had encouraged Erwin to lean forward and blow out the candle. Erwin had smiled, obliging, and had blew it out with a single puff. The smoke had trailed up from the curling wick, white wax melting down towards the toast, and Erwin remembered looking up to find Levi's lips parted, his tongue flickering uncertainly between them, looking like words weighted heavy on the tip of his tongue. Erwin had waited expectantly, fork and knife poised over the stack of toast, giving him time to speak. 

Levi had shrugged then, sitting down and pushing the small pile of wrapped paper towards him. Erwin had unwrapped them with a small smile and syrup sticky around the corners of his mouth.

* * *

"The Mr. Coffee was abducted during the night," Erwin explained now, almost sheepishly, thinking about the unceremonious way he'd stuffed the old coffeemaker, which had certainly seen better days, back into its box and carted it off to the rubbish bin, where he'd promptly buried it underneath a pile of garbage bags to ensure that Levi wouldn't come upon it accidentally. "Or perhaps it ran away to New York City to pursue its dreams of carafe fame." 

Levi rolled his eyes, but accepted the cup of coffee Erwin pressed into his hands. He cradled the porcelain mug in his hands, lowering his face over it, inhaling and blowing across the surface. Steam swirled in little curlicues from the rim of the cup, and fogged up the lenses of Levi's glasses. He'd conceded to Erwin's request that he start wearing them more often, "but only because you said I look hot in them." Now, in the mornings, it was routine for Levi to yawn, stretch, sit up and reach for the glasses, which he kept folded on the nightstand by the digital alarm clock.  

He pursed his lips around the rim, took a small sip. Rolled the flavor around in his mouth, contemplative, while Erwin waited anxiously for his approval. 

"I like it." And the Keurig was deemed acceptable, and relegated to a spot of honor on the granite kitchen counter. 

* * *

The second birthday that Erwin and Levi had celebrated together was December 25, 2000, Levi's twenty-third. Erwin had been delighted to no end to discover that Levi's birthday fell on Christmas; he'd ratted out the information by taking a few gratuitous peeks at Levi's driver's license while Levi was occupied in the shower. Levi had refused to tell him otherwise, insisting that birthdays didn't particularly matter, that they were nothing but something fabricated by large corporations to squeeze more money out of unsuspecting consumers. 

Erwin had pointedly ignored his protests, and when Christmas morning dawned bright and crisp, he'd taken Levi's hand and led him to the living room, where their sagging, creaking sofa had been buried under a pile of presents that would have put even Santa's workshop to shame. Levi's mouth had fallen open, his expression full of awe and wonder and incredulity, as if he couldn't possibly believe that the sight in front of him was real. 

He had snapped his jaw shut abruptly, turned to Erwin with a mixture composed of equal parts fury and adoration. "We're going to be eating instant noodles for a month, aren't we?" he had asked, but he hadn't been able to keep the smile out of his voice. 

"I'll take all the shrimp packets, don't worry," Erwin had said, a grin starting to paint its way over his face at Levi's lack of instant rebuttal. "I know you don't like those."

Levi had sighed, shaking his head and running a hand through his hair, looking at the pile of presents, a small sweet smile sneaking across his lips before he could stop its progress. 

"Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas, hugs and kisses," Erwin had rattled off, pushing the first box of many into Levi's hands. It had become a part of their Christmas Day tradition, along with the absurd pile of presents in the living room and the eggnog toasts by the fireplace in the evening, and it had been the conception of Levi's collection of novelty ties.

* * *

T he first box Erwin pushed into Levi's hands was rectangular, long, and Levi was not disappointed to find that it was yet another novelty tie. This one was a bright green, red cherries dancing across the fabric. It was positively horrendous, and something that Levi would never wear in polite company. Needless to say, he adored it, and privately thought he might start wearing his novelty ties to lectures this year. He had just achieved tenure, so he really had nothing more to lose. 

Levi had formally entered the ranks of the middle-aged, easing into his fourth decade with a grace and sophistication that Erwin was secretly jealous of. His ebony hair had started sporting tiny streaks of silver, like shooting stars through the darkness of the night, and Erwin liked to watch him in the bathroom mirror, leaning towards his reflection and frowning at the grey hairs he uncovered every morning while Erwin brushed his teeth in the double sink beside him. 

"They make you look distinguished, you know," Erwin had said through a mouthful of toothpaste, spitting foam all over the countertop. Levi rolled his eyes in disgust and had swabbed it up with a square of toilet paper. 

* * *

By the time Erwin pressed the last present into Levi's hands, the living room had become a veritable blizzard of wrapping paper in all shades of red and green and blue. It was endearing, watching the way Levi unwrapped each present, scraps flying everywhere in his excitement. Santas and reindeers and snowflakes littered every available surface, some having even found their way into Levi's hair, and Erwin plucked them out absentmindedly as he hefted himself up onto the couch beside Levi. The cushions had not been spared from the deluges of wrapping paper, and the sofa crinkled when Erwin sat down. 

"Is this another novelty tie?" Levi wanted to know, holding up the last box, which was also flat and rectangular. "You usually only get me one a year." 

"Just unwrap it and find out for yourself, why don't you?" Erwin said, with a grin. Levi had deemed this year's novelty tie particularly hideous, and it was currently knotted around his neck, the cherries bouncing with every one of Levi's actions. 

Levi unwrapped it with the same vigor he'd unwrapped everything else. And then a pause. 

"These are our vows," Levi said, his voice quiet. "I thought I'd misplaced them..." He trailed off, shaking his head. It had taken the work of several afternoons when Levi was still at the university for Erwin to sort through the piles of paper Levi kept around. Oh, undoubtedly Levi was organized, undoubtedly everything had its own specific place in his mad little filing system, but it was an arrangement that made sense to Levi, and no one else. But the relief coloring Levi's gaze shot a piercing arrow of guilt through him, and, just like that, the air in the room, scented with gingerbread and cinnamon, seemed to have gone stale, seemed to have grown thick and suffocating.  

"Sorry," Erwin said quietly, reaching out to take Levi's hand in his. The cool smoothness of Levi's ring rubbed against the insides of his fingers. "I wasn't thinking about, well, about that, when I was doing it."  

_ The monster had gone into hiding after that fateful morning the late summer of last year, as though aware it had been discovered, and erwin, foolishly, had assumed that this meant it had been vanquished for good. But monsters never really die; they fade away into your closets and the spaces underneath your bed and wait for weakness, wait for you to use up your silver bullets and your holy water, and then crawl out, one dark finger at a time. _

"Read them to me," Levi said gently, pressing the framed scroll into erwin's hands. "It's been a while." 

* * *

Erwin had channeled his inner college student when writing his vows. They had been complete spur of the moment, written an hour or so before the actual wedding ceremony took place, fueled by desperation and a few consolatory cans of Red Bull that his best man, Mike Zacharius, had so kindly brought up for him. 

"Just make sure you don't drop the ring. This stuff gives you jitters," Mike had said, raised eyebrows, but he hadn't stopped Erwin from cracking open the second can and downing half of it in one gulp. 

His hands had been shaking at the altar, but then Levi had taken his hands, soft and calming and steady, and somehow he had found his voice, found it strong and confident, as though he'd never had a doubt about what he was going to say. 

_ I promise to love you and care for you in all the ways I know how, for as long as you'll let me. I promise I will try the best I can, to every day be found worthy of your love.  _

_ You have been the best teacher, the best model, my confidant and my confidence. I am truly blessed to be a part of your life, and am beyond grateful that today, it can become our life. _

* * *

"You were shaking so badly," Levi said now, grinning in reminiscence. "I thought you were going to throw up. I'd have been supremely pissed, just for the record. I was wearing Calvin Klein. That's not cheap, you know." 

"I know," Erwin said, smiling back. "It's a good thing I didn't, then. We wouldn't have been able to keep it." The Calvin Klein suit in question was still hanging in Levi's closet, lapels starched and neat, as though he'd stepped out of it and it still held the memory of his form, though Erwin knew he hadn't worn that particular suit in ten and a half years. 

"It's my turn, I suppose," Levi said, reaching out for the framed scroll and clearing his throat. 

* * *

Levi had looked scared, fearful, hopeful, but there had been a certain determination about the set of his mouth, confidence and firmness that set Erwin more at ease than the death grip Levi currently had on his hands. 

_ I will not make you vows.  _

Erwin remembered the shock that had run through him, and their friends and family sitting in the pews, at the first sentence. Vows were, by definition, promises, oaths, unbreakable and binding, and he remembered wondering for half a second if Levi were about to up and leave him. 

Levi had licked his lips, had cleared his throat. 

_ I do not see the vows I am about to make to you as promises, but as privileges. I am lucky, because I get to have a lifetime to make memories and merriment with you; I am fortunate that we can live and laugh and love together. The only thing I can promise you, for certain, is myself, every inch, every breath, every word, for as long as you'll have me. _

* * *

Erwin didn't remember crying. Levi scoffed.

"You sobbed like a baby," he said now, nudging Erwin, whose eyes have started to go glossy with tears. "Are you going to cry again?"  

"No, I'm not," Erwin shook his head, but his voice was thick. Levi rolled his eyes and handed him a tissue from the box on the coffee table, looking particularly offended when Erwin honked his nose loudly into it.  

"You're getting old and sentimental on me," Levi said, but there was a soft hint of gentleness in his voice as he set the framed vows down, gently, and patting Erwin's back soothingly. "You'll be collecting Social Security soon." 

"I'm only forty-three," Erwin muttered, rubbing at his eyes. "And you're forty now, you've no right to judge." 

"Yes, I'm forty," Levi said, his tone contemplative. "I'm glad you're still with me," he murmured after a while, squeezing Erwin's hand. 

_ even the strong are not without their monsters; they have just simply learned to live with them, sometimes with a bit of help.  _

 


	12. The First Hope, Again

It happened, like most unfortunate things do, on a Monday. Mondays were the bane of Erwin's, and several other working adults's, existence, spelling out an end to the glorious freedom of the weekends with their bitter grey mornings and the alarm clocks beeping loud and shrill, the coffee burning away in the bottom of the carafe. Erwin positively despised Mondays, with a passion that rivaled the one Levi cultivated for cleaning. 

Levi was unusually quiet at dinner, and Erwin thought that perhaps he'd had something particularly pressing on his mind, like the current skirmishes going on in the Middle East or the rising price of petroleum. Levi picked at his food that night, a spicy chicken curry that Erwin had picked up from Spices, the Indian restaurant around the corner from his office, before pushing away his plate and declaring that he'd heat it up to microwave later, since he planned to be up rather late that night. 

Erwin looked at him curiously, his own plate of curry already demolished. It wasn't like Levi to pass up curry from Spices. At his inquisitive look, Levi just shrugged. 

"I've been asked to speak at a symposium," he explained, his tone nonchalant, as though this sort of invitation happened all the time. "And I guess I'm still in shock about the whole thing." 

Erwin leapt up from the table, a grin on his face. "Why, that's amazing!" he exclaimed, placing his hands flat on the table and making the silverware jump. "It...it is a good thing, isn't it?" he asked after the fact, looking at Levi, who was still sitting down at the table. Though he couldn't make out the whole of Levi's expression, he could see the telltale traces of a smile sketch their way across Levi's mouth. 

"Yes, it's a fantastic thing," Levi affirmed. "Now sit down, you're disrupting the cutlery." Erwin sat down promptly, grinning as Levi pulled the plate of curry back towards him and began to scoop up fluffy spoonfuls of rice. 

Erwin woke up later that night. The alarm clock read 11:47 P.M., and the warm mass of Levi's body had disappeared from its customary spot on the blank side of the mattress next to Erwin. The sheets had been neatly thrown back, the linens still bearing a hollow where Levi had been, gaping, expectant, waiting for him to come back and lie down. Erwin waited a few moments, thinking that perhaps Levi had gone to the bathroom, or gone downstairs for a glass of water, but when he showed no signs of coming back, Erwin flung back the linens himself and went to go investigate. 

He came upon Levi sitting at the kitchen table, the glow of the warm yellow lights overhead highlighting the sparks of silver in his hair. His face was buried in his hands, fingers pressed tightly against his scalp, muttering to himself under his breath. 

Erwin strained to hear him. The words were rapid, slicking one after the other, consonants blurred together in whispery exhalations. He came closer, tiptoeing almost so that Levi wouldn't hear. Though they were married, something about this situation felt private. And while Erwin was well aware that marriage and giving up one's individuality were not mutually exclusive, he couldn't help but feel left out. 

He opened his mouth to speak, when suddenly Levi's voice cut into his mind. 

"...name is Levi Ackerman, I am forty years old, biochemistry professor at St. Maria's College. I am married to Erwin Smith, who is vice president of marketing at Sina Technology. We got married May 12th, 2006. I live at...at..."

Levi paused, tugging at his hair ineffectually, and Erwin held his breath. He wanted to reach out, wanted desperately to help, the numbers of their address springing readily to the tip of his tongue. He almost jumped, clinging to the doorjamb with white-knuckled fingers, as Levi slapped the table with the flat of his hand, cursing. 

"Damn it," he hissed, and Erwin could hear the cracks, the desperation, in his voice, even though Levi was trying to keep quiet, presumably so that the still-sleeping Erwin wouldn't hear. "Damn it, damn it, damn it all. Think, think, think. Why can't you just fucking remember? You've lived here for six bloody years now." 

It hurt, cut, burned Erwin to the core to listen to the vitriol spilling from Levi's tongue. Levi had always been his harshest critic, and usually Erwin had found it easy to break Levi out of his dark moods, with a kiss and a smile and a bowl of heavily-buttered popcorn, but he had a feeling that the cloud that flew heavy-bellied over Levi's soul was just waiting for the slightest prick to unleash rain and thunder. 

Levi sighed, a desperate edge in his breath, as he picked up an envelope that Erwin hadn't been able to see from his vantage point. Levi looked at it, studied the address on the flap, before putting it back face down and beginning his recitations again. 

"My name is Levi Ackerman. I am forty years old. I am a biochemistry professor at St. Maria's College. I am married to Erwin Smith, who is the vice president of marketing at Sina Technology. We got married May 12th, 2006. I live at -" and erwin held his breath here, praying, begging, hoping - "4465 Greenwich Parkway." Erwin let out his breath, a silent exhalation, gratitude and relief and dread mingling in the pit of his stomach, weighted heavy like a stone. 

He wasn't sure how long he stood there, watching Levi, his hand cramping around the smooth wood of the doorjamb, the chill from the hardwood floor seeping into the soles of his feet and sending shivers tingling up his spine. He ached to go over, to reach out and gather Levi into his arms and brush away the shadows that cluttered the far reaches of his mind. 

But it was Levi's war, and while Erwin was more than willing to be the bannerman, the infantry, the cavalry and the heavy artillery all rolled into one, the battleground of Levi's mind was littered with labyrinths and mires and trenches that only Levi could navigate. 

But, listening to Levi's recitations, listening to his attempts to drill the information into muscle memory if nothing else, Erwin thought that perhaps Levi had lost the map. 

* * *

He beat a hasty retreat when Levi stood up, head bent over the table, his chair scraping back against the hardwood. With a stealth that Erwin was surprised he still possessed, he all but ran up the stairs and flung himself into bed, trying to arrange the covers around him and desperately taking deep breaths to calm his racing heartbeat before Levi came back to bed. 

Levi came in a few moments later, his steps soft and measured, climbing onto the bed with equal caution, trying to spread out his weight so he wouldn't disturb Erwin. Erwin wanted to roll over, wanted to shake him, wanted to hold and cherish him and whisper that everything would be all right. But Levi never sugarcoated, never made empty promises, and Erwin had a feeling his admittance to witnessing Levi's weaknesses would not be received well. 

Levi lay down beside him, sliding between the sheets, the linen and satin accepting him easily as though he'd never been gone. Even with his eyes closed, Erwin could still feel Levi rolling onto his side, could feel the weight of his scrutiny as Levi studied him in the dark with a frightful intensity, as though trying to memorize each and every one of his features. He was worried that his breathing was too loud, that somehow Levi would know, but after a moment or two, Levi sighed, wriggled himself beneath Erwin's arm, his breath soft and warm against Erwin's neck. 

As he drew Levi closer, movements slow in an attempt to mimic the foggy actions of slumber, Erwin was afraid to grasp too tightly, terrified to hold too closely. Levi was undeniably fragile, glass shattering with every inch and every breath and every word, leaving Erwin in the chaotic aftermath, afraid to take a step for fear of further destruction. They had sworn at the altar, in front of the world and whatever higher beings there may be, to a lifetime together, a lifetime rich with experience and laughter and love. Levi's breathing evened out after a few minutes, soft and deep and steady, and Erwin gently placed a hand on the back of his head, stroking through the soft strands, letting his eyes drift open. 

The digital clock on the nightstand read 1:38 AM. Swears were vows were promises, and promises are easily broken, easily forgotten, easily thrown aside in the face of reality. 

* * *

_ It had been Levi who had brought up the topic of children, much to Erwin's surprise. Levi was prickly by nature, and liked his solitude and his neatness, and children were anything but solitary and neat. Erwin had wanted children, desperately so, wanted to hold a little white bundle in his arms and marvel at the grasp of tiny fingers around his thumb. He had wanted a son or a daughter who had his eyes and the shape of Levi's mouth when he smiled. Admittedly, it had been a silly fantasy, even sillier when, in a half-drunken, half-fatigued stupor, he'd thought about Levi's slender frame swollen with a child.  _

_ But he hadn't needed Levi to inform him that this was a physical impossibility, and so he'd tucked the idea of children away.  _

_ So he had been nothing short of surprised when Levi brought up the topic about two years into their marriage.  _

_ It had been a bright fall day in 2008, Erwin recalled, and people were frantic about the burst of the housing market bubble. He remembered the timing because it seemed like the absolute worst time to have kids, not when futures and careers were so uncertain. Levi had brought it up over weak instant coffee.  _

_ "How do you feel about kids?" Levi had asked, making it sound as though he were bringing up the weather. Erwin had studied him through the steam rising from his cracked porcelain cup, taking a sip and wincing at the bitter flavor, before replying.  _

_ "I'd like them," he had said carefully, slowly. "But if you don't, that's fine with me, also."  _

_ "I've been thinking about it recently," Levi had explained, not looking Erwin in the eye. "As I'm sure you already know, it's a bit biologically impossible for us to have kids together. I mean, we can have kids together, but not like that." It was unlike Levi to stutter, to not meet Erwin's gaze, and Erwin had suddenly realized the weight of the significance Levi had placed on this particular topic, the strength it must have taken to bring it up in uncharted waters. "But I...I think I'd like to have them, also. Or just one kid. One kid might be better, in fact, what with university tuition going up all the time." He had been babbling, words tripping over each other in his nervousness.  _

_ "What were you thinking?" Erwin had asked, reaching across the table to place his hand on top of Levi's.  _

_ "We could use a surrogate," Levi had said, contemplative. "That way the kid would at least have half of one of us. Or we could adopt..." His voice had trailed off, thick with possibility.  _

_ "I'm not sure either of us are good enough friends with any women for the first option, and adoption might be a bit hard, in our present circumstances," Erwin had replied, taking a look around at the kitchen. Though Levi cleaned it meticulously, showers of plaster frequently rained down on them whenever the occupants of the apartment upstairs sat down to dinner. "We'd have to get better jobs, buy a better place, one that's a bit more kid-friendly. Probably out in the suburbs."  _

_ Levi had sipped at his coffee thoughtfully. "We'll become that couple, won't we?" he had asked after a moment. His face had broken out into a wicked smirk, one that Erwin couldn't help but reciprocate. "The suburban parents, with a neatly trimmed lawn that falls within the Home Owner's Association's regulations and a minivan. That'll be us."  _

_ Erwin had smiled fondly at him before leaning over the table for a kiss. Levi's mouth had tasted inexplicably like sweetness, tinged with the flavor of hope and instant coffee. "We'll buy in bulk from Costco," Erwin had whispered against Levi's lips, and Levi had all but dragged him back upstairs to bed.  _

* * *

_ Life had given them luck and good fortune, showering them with promotions and jobs and opportunities, and a year and a half later, they'd found themselves buying a house together, one set firmly in the suburbs, surrounded by families. The sounds of police sirens and car alarms faded away, to be replaced by birds chirping morning songs to each other in the branches and the vivacious squeals of playing children.  _

_ "Well, this is it," Erwin had said, after the last moving van had pulled away. Levi had stood beside him, his dark hair, then completely black, a bandana pulled across his head to protect from the dust that the movers had dislodged, plopping down the boxes of their worldly containers every which way. "Our home."  _

_ "Yeah, it looks that way," Levi had replied, his tone incredulous, as though he still found it hard to believe that this was theirs. His tone had turned furious when erwin bent at the knees to scoop him up into his arms.  _

_ "Put me down!" Levi had hissed, kicking ineffectually. "What do you think you're doing?" Erwin had cheerfully ignored his protests and his flailing and had marched with him through the front door before setting him down amongst the boxes and half-assembled furniture that littered the foyer.  _

_ "I was just christening the house," Erwin had explained, and Levi had rolled his eyes at him before allowing himself to dissolve into the sweet persistence of Erwin's kiss.  _

_ They had toasted each other that night over takeout cartons of Chinese food, tapping their fortune cookies together before cracking them open and extracting the thin slips of paper.  _

_ Erwin couldn't remember what fortune he'd gotten, something generic about good health and good wealth, probably, but Levi had been overly excited by his.  _

_ "What's it say?" Erwin had asked, sputtering crumbs all over the floor.  _

_ Levi had cleared his throat. "It says, 'The bounty of your life will soon swell.' You know what this means, don't you? We're going to be parents."  _

_ Erwin had smiled at Levi's unrestrained optimism.  _

* * *

Now, over half a decade later, the leap into parenthood still hadn't been achieved. They had set up an adoption profile, selecting pictures that showed them at their finest: at their wedding, having picnics at the beach, eating ice cream, a dribble of pistachio dripping down erwin's wrist. But the photos were outdated now, and Levi and Erwin hadn't gotten any younger, their faces sprouting wrinkles, their hair starting to sport spatters of silver. Birth mothers usually wanted to place their newborns with young, healthy, hearty people who they could ensure would be around for a long time. Stable. Dependable. Reliant. Erwin vaguely wondered if those adjectives were relevant to them anymore. 

* * *

_ After setting up their profile, complete with phone number and email address, and sending it Live with a hopeful prayer to any potential mothers out there.  _

_ Levi had all but sat by the phone for half a year, jumping up every time it rang, and Erwin had kept the same diligence towards the email address they'd created for the profile.  _

_ But, as the days and weeks and months slipped past, and the voicemail and email boxes only filled up with messages and advertisements from telemarketers, the idea of children slowly began to dissolve.  _

* * *

It happened, like most good things tend to do, on a Saturday. Erwin woke up at 9, body deliciously heavy and relaxed from an excess of sleep. He was tempted to lie there and wallow in his laziness when Levi came back into the bedroom and prodded him reluctantly fully into wakefulness. 

"We got an email," he said, his eyes wide, excited, barely able to contain his excitement. It took a moment for Erwin to process this information. Why wouldn't Levi have gotten emails? He was presenting at a symposium in a few weeks, it was only logical that he'd be getting emails. And Erwin was vice president of the marketing division, he had people emailing him all the time. And then Levi had said 'we,' and what could that possibly mean - oh. Oh. 

Erwin sat up straight, nearly smashing his forehead into Lev's nose. "You mean from the adoption agency?" he asked. Levi's gleeful expression affirmed it. "Wow, that's, um, that's fantastic." 

The hesitation in his tone infused Levi's expression with doubt. "What?" he asked, looking confused. "This is a good thing, Erwin. We've been waiting years to get matched. Unless you don't want kids anymore? You never indicated otherwise." His eyebrows furrowed with concern. 

"No, I do, I'd love to have kids," Erwin said, sitting up fully, heavily. "I guess I'm just worried about getting our hopes up, and then not having it come to anything. even if we get approved for adoption with the agency and the parents, and get the home study done and everything, we're not exactly at an age where we can just be running after kids and getting up at all hours of the morning to feed or change or snuggle babies." Levi's expression fell further, and Erwin felt horrendous. Devil's advocate was not a role he was good at playing, and this had been something that he and Levi had wanted for a long time, but Erwin wasn't quite sure it was realistic anymore. 

There was a strained moment of silence. "Well," Erwin said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, "it certainly can't hurt to take a look at it." Levi's expression brightened again, hopeful, and as Erwin followed Levi downstairs, he found that, for the first time, he couldn't bring himself to imagine the pitter-patter of tiny feet floating through the air. 

* * *

"She wants to meet us," Levi told him breathlessly. "Her name is Sasha." He tilted his laptop screen so Erwin could see. Sasha was a pretty brunette with a spray of jasmine tangled in her hair, a spattering of freckles scattered across the planes of her cheekbones. 

"She looks nice," Erwin admitted reluctantly. "I'm sure she'll have a gorgeous baby."

"Her due date is in four months," Levi said, reading another line from the missive she'd sent. "She says she's expecting a girl." 

Visions of pink smocks and frilly mittens and tiny socks just barely large enough to cover his thumb danced around in Erwin's head. A little girl, who would grow up and go to school dances while he and Levi sat up and worried about what she was doing with her boyfriend; a little girl, who would run to them for comfort after the burn and sear of her first crush and subsequent heartbreak; a little girl to love and to hold and to cherish, who would call him Daddy and Levi Papa. 

He wanted it so badly he could taste it, so against his better judgment, he said, "When does she want to meet up?" 


	13. The First Joy, Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written to: Creature Fear - Bon Iver.

"How do I look?" Levi asked him as he smoothed out the collar of his dark green dress shirt for what must have been at least the fifth time. 

Erwin sighed good-naturedly, rolling his eyes with a little smile. He couldn't remember the last time Levi had been so nervous for an event, nor could he remember the last time Levi had prepared for a momentous event with such care. He leaned over and patted the shirt pocket placed over Levi's heart, which had been sporting a little pocket of air from all of Levi's previous efforts to straighten his collar and appear like a well-adjusted member of society. 

"You look positively fatherly," Erwin said with a grin as Levi scowled at him in their bathroom mirror. "I'd adopt my child out to you in a heartbeat. Not with that expression, though." He reached over again and rubbed at the furrow between Levi's eyebrows, and had his hand swatted away for his efforts. "There. That's much better." 

Levi finally deemed himself respectable before turning his attentions to Erwin. "Dear God, what are you wearing?" he yelped, nearly undoing all of the previous half hour's efforts with the speed at which he turned his head to Erwin. "You look sloppy." The outfit, in question, was one of Erwin's T-shirts which had undoubtedly seen better days, a now unreadable logo emblazoned across the chest. The seam connecting one sleeve to the shirt's body was fraying, tiny pieces of thread peeking out. This, combined with one of Erwin's older pairs of jeans, one that had had all the color already bleached out to a faint bluish-white thanks to several trips through the washer, had Levi pushing Erwin toward the closet. 

"I look like a dad you'd see in a commercial!" Erwin protested through the wooden door. Levi had shut it, and was firmly resolved to stand on the other side, palms pressed firmly against the smooth surface to prevent Erwin from escaping before he'd changed his attire. "I look normal!" 

"Just wear the blue dress shirt," Levi said, through gritted teeth. "You know, the one that brings out your eyes." 

There was a bit of rustling before Erwin knocked meekly on the inside of the closet door. Much to Levi's satisfaction, he had put on the requested shirt, the one that Levi positively adored because it draped over Erwin's frame delightfully and was quite soft to the touch. And then his gaze traveled downward, and he promptly snapped the closet door closed again. 

"Put on the black jeans," he called through the door. "I'm not letting you out of the house dressed like that. You're an embarrassment to society." 

"I'm just trying to be a dad!" Erwin called back, but there came the further sound of more rustling, a quiet sort of thudding followed by a string of curses - "We can't curse any more, Erwin! We can't be bad influences on the child!" - before another set of meek taps came at the door. 

"Good, that's quite excellent," Levi said proudly, finally stepping aside to let Erwin out of his purgatory. In a softer, gentler tone, "You'll make a good father, Erwin." 

Erwin smiled and couldn't help but ruffle Levi's hair up a bit, and Levi promptly took back his compliment. 

* * *

_ After finally settling into their new house on Greenwich Parkway, Erwin and Levi had gone out shopping for baby paraphernalia, optimism and joy running rampant through their veins and drugging them with the ecstasy of those expecting. They'd put off purchasing some of the larger items, like a cradle and a changing table, because as Levi had wisely pointed out, they might get approved to adopt a child as opposed to a baby.  _

_ Erwin remembered one particular warm summer morning that they'd spent together in one of the spare upstairs bedrooms, one that had a beautiful bay window overlooking the quiet street below. A window seat had been built in, just the perfect size for an enthusiastic child, a mopey teenager, to curl up with a cup of tea and a book. On some rainy days when the university was on holiday, Erwin could find Levi curled up in the window seat with a blanket thrown over his lap, a steaming cup of chai by his elbow, his head propped on one hand as he leafed through a novel, a newspaper, a scientific article.  _

_ That particular summer morning, they had just returned from one such shopping spree, laden down with cans of paint and aluminum trays and rollers. Levi had picked out a shade of pale green that reminded Erwin of new grass and mint chocolate chip, and they'd set down tarps and lined the crown moldings with blue tape. Swathes of green had been lathered over the walls, and when Levi had turned to Erwin to kindly ask him to get the top parts of the wall, there had been a smudge of green on his cheek, a dab on his wrist, imperfections making him all the more beautiful for it.  _

_ Erwin recalled that he'd been dressed in an old set of capris, one that dated back to Levi's grad school days, one with a hole in the right thigh because Levi had accidentally left the iron on it for too long. The T-shirt that he'd been wearing was one of Erwin's, an old cotton one from some surf shop in Long Beach. Erwin still had that T-shirt squirreled away somewhere in the darker recesses of his closet, still sporting green streaks across its front.  _

* * *

Levi was jittery the whole drive to the cafe where Sasha had asked to meet them. He couldn't stop fidgeting, crossing and uncrossing his legs, fiddling with his hands, drumming his fingers on his thigh, one after the other, in rapid succession. 

"Levi, calm down," Erwin said gently as they took the exit off the expressway. "She'll love you. She'll love us." 

"That's easy for you to say," Levi said. Erwin reached over and wrapped one of Levi's hand comfortingly in his own as they pulled to a stop at a red light. "You're always so personable and charismatic, and I'm...well, I'm not exactly the easiest person to get along with, as I'm sure you know. It's a wonder we've made it this long." 

Erwin smiled, moving his hand back to the gear shift and clicking the 'Right Turn' indicator on. "I'm a man of great endurance." 

They remained silent until they pulled into the parking lot of Claire's, an organic cafe with a beautiful view of the Golden Gate Bridge from its front windows. It was a foggy Saturday morning, and the tops of the arches were obscured in mist. Levi shivered as he stepped out of the car, and Erwin draped an arm around his waist as he locked the car and walked him to the front door of the cafe. 

Besides the owner, a cherubic-looking blonde with a heart-shaped face who gladly showed them to a table and set menus in front of them, the cafe was otherwise unoccupied. Levi pretended to study the menu, but Erwin could feel him jiggling his leg beneath the table, and he reached beneath to place a comforting hand on the fidgety limb. Stable. Steady. 

"Just take a deep breath," Erwin said gently, and Levi complied, exhaling a long soft stream of air after a few moments. "Everything will work out the way it's supposed to."

* * *

_ Levi had stenciled cute puffy animals around the bottom of the room, dancing across the walls in neat straight lines, elephants, giraffes, zebras with rounded limbs and large happy smiles.  _

_ Erwin remembered one late summer evening, where he'd been leaning against the door jamb of the room they'd begun to call the nursery. He had watched as Levi sat on the floor, his features illuminated by the soft golden light from the floor lamp they'd picked out for the room, one with a sweeping cotton lampshade in a pleasing shade of cream. His brows had been furrowed in focus as he'd leaned forward, the paintbrush he'd held in his hand fine-tipped and coated with white paint. Erwin had watched him, had grinned as Levi's tongue peeked out from his mouth in concentration.  _

_ He had stood there for about fifteen minutes, admiring the curve of Levi's spine in one of his old sweaters, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his wrist creamy in the shafts of light. Levi had sat back, brushed a few strands of hair out of his face, and had turned to Erwin with a little smile, paint smeared across his cheekbone.  _

* * *

Ten minutes past the appointed time turned into fifteen turned into half an hour. Levi looked at the watch on his left hand anxiously, sipping a decaf chai latte and taking little pecks at a cinnamon roll, eventually pushing the plate entirely towards Erwin. 

"Maybe she's stuck in traffic," Erwin said gently, laying a hand on top of Levi's. "Don't worry. I'm sure she's coming." 

* * *

_ They had spent lazy summer evenings on the front porch swing, ankles hooked together and glasses of strong sweet tea sweating rings of condensation into the thighs of their jeans. Fireflies rose up, flitting around pinpricks of light, and cicadas chirped around their syllables.  _

_ "What should we name it?" Levi had asked dreamily, resting his head in the crook of Erwin's neck. "Assuming we get to adopt a baby." _

_ "I really like the name Marie," Erwin had mused, taking a sip and mulling the sweet liquid around in his mouth. "You can pick the name if it's a boy."  _

_ "I like Levi Jr."  _

_ Levi's voice had been dead pan, and Erwin had nearly spat out the mouth of sweet tea he'd had. He'd turned, incredulous, to find Levi's mouth curved into a smile.  _

_ There was an amber stain on the porch that Erwin had never quite gotten around to cleaning up, from where he'd knocked over Levi's glass of sweet tea as he pushed him down onto the swing, sending the hinges creaking crazily. Levi's laughter, contentment with abandon, had scented their summers with joy, the color of pistachio and aquamarine.  _

_ It was a sound that Erwin hadn't heard in quite a while, and which he longed to replicate.  _

* * *

At forty-five minutes past the appointed hour, the bells over the top of the entrance were sent into a flurry, chiming wildly. Erwin looked up from the remains of the cinnamon roll he'd been halfheartedly dissecting, and Levi looked up from the dregs of his decaf chai latte. The woman standing in the doorway was flushed, her soft brown hair curling around her face and escaping from the bun she'd put it up in earlier, a tie-dyed tote bag slung over her shoulder as she looked around the cafe. The fog had dissipated, and the early morning sunshine highlighted the small swell of her stomach. She spotted them, and her face broke out into a grin as she hurried over. 

"It's such a pleasure to meet you!" she exclaimed as she set her tote bag down, nearly upsetting Levi's cup as she maneuvered her way into a seat. "I've been looking forward to it. I got caught up in traffic on the way over." 

She made no mention of how outdated their profile was, made no comment on how old they'd become. She was rather charming, if in an absentminded sort of way, and she chattered about her university classes and her cravings and the music festival she hoped to go to. She was young and hopeful, and a baby didn't exactly figure into that equation. Neither she, nor her boyfriend, whose picture she showed them on her phone screen, were ready for this sort of commitment, but she admitted that she couldn't bring herself to have an abortion. Neither could she bear the thought of dropping Lucy, as she had started to call the little girl, off at an orphanage. 

What she really wanted, Sasha admitted as she worked her way through a bran muffin, was just to make sure that her baby girl would grow up with two kind-hearted and devoted parents who could make the time to raise her in a house full of love and laughter. And she'd picked out Erwin and Levi's profile, out of all the other potential parents, because she adored the wedding picture they'd posted. 

"You looked so happy," she said, smiling as she took a sip of her green tea. "And I can tell you're still in love, even though some time has clearly passed." This was her only concession to their age. "Sometimes people fall out of love with each other after a while. And I'd like Lucy" - with a gesture to her belly - "to have two parents who love each other and aren't trying to keep a marriage together with a child. You know what I'm saying?" 

Erwin nodded, gently stroking Levi's thumb with his own from where their hands were stacked on top of the table. Levi was listening attentively, raptly, his attention focused solely on the girl sitting across the table. 

A baby, he thought to himself. A baby and a husband and a house in the suburbs. The perfect trifecta. And yet, he couldn't seem to reconcile the Levi sitting next to him and listening to Sasha babble on about the pregnancy books she'd read with the Levi who he'd witnessed sitting, bent and broken, at the kitchen table a few weeks ago. 

But, he thought, squeezing Levi's hand gently, perhaps a child was exactly what they needed to bring Levi out of the mental fog he'd seemed to be wading through for the past weeks, months, years. A child would bring clarity and cheerfulness in shades of pistachio and aquamarine, laughter and sunshine and joy. 

And, if the slight squeeze Levi gave him back was any indication, he agreed. 

* * *

Sasha left 1.5 muffins later, during which she'd told them everything about herself, from her blood type to her shoe size, and then she whirled out, leaving a trail of crumbs and the faint scent of citrusy perfume in her wake. At the cafe door, bells chiming above her, she'd turned and, with a little grin, had hollered that they were exactly the parents she was looking for. 

"She seemed nice," Erwin said as he watched Levi absentmindedly sweeping up the muffin crumbs she'd left behind. "And she seemed to like us, too." 

"Yeah," Levi murmured, staring out the window to where the arches had started to appear. "This is happening, isn't it? We're going to be parents." 

"After the home study and background checks and everything, yeah. And little Lucy will have to be born also, don't forget about that." Erwin wrapped his arm around Levi's shoulder, squeezing comfortingly. 

After a moment, Levi turned to him triumphantly. "See, I told you you should have worn this shirt. She loved it. She loved you." 

"She loved us," Erwin corrected, pecking Levi affectionately on the cheek. 

Levi's upturned smile was sunny, and Erwin thought he could sense hues of teal sneaking in. He couldn't help but smile back. 

 


	14. The First Admittance, Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written to: Sleeping Sickness - City and Colour

The monster comes and goes in waves, following the changing pace of the tide. The moon kisses the sea a sweet farewell and promises lovingly that it will be back someday, and the ocean rises up in rebellion, reaching salty fingers out for its departing, obliviously ignorant love, not comprehending, refusing to understand that this is just the routine of life, the wax, the wane, the ebb and flow of the tide. It roars out in agony, surf crashing heavily on the pebbles of history, burning riptides that whip stature and status out from underneath cultivated lives, scattering debris in its despair. 

Erwin kissed Levi goodbye the morning of the symposium, wishing him luck and promising him lovingly that he'd be in the audience for the seven o'clock event. Levi would be presenting on his research of the past year and a half, something involving sexual selection in mice. erwin had a vague idea of what his husband did in his research lab, but it was safe to say that he had no idea on the particulars, other than that it involved lots of clumsy undergraduates and mice hellbent on escaping their cages, if Levi's descriptions over dinner could be believed. 

* * *

_ The first time Erwin had visited Levi at his laboratory had been a particularly stormy day in April. erwin had taken a half-day at work, had bought takeout curry from Spices and went to bring Levi lunch. It had been a Thursday, Erwin recalled, because Levi didn't have lecture that day, and after walking aimlessly around the campus for a bit, a well-meaning undergraduate informed him that the research laboratories were in the opposite direction.  _

_ He'd called Levi once he was safely inside the lobby of the building, his coat dripping puddles all over the stone floor. The reception in the building had been subpar at best, and Levi's voice had come staticky over the line, telling him he'd be down in a minute.  _

_ One minute turned into five turned into fifteen, and Erwin had felt sure the curry would have gone stone cold when the elevator to his left dinged open, and Levi was inviting him in, apologizing for the wait.  _

* * *

Times like this, when he wasn't up close, when he was part of the audience, it was easy to forget that he'd been married to Levi for eleven  years. It was easy to forget that Levi now had shots of silver in his hair, gathering around the temples; it was easy to forget that Levi had crow's feet congregating around the corners of his eyes. The Levi that was standing at the podium, taking a sip of water and arranging his notes, the Levi that was looking out at the assembled crowd of scientists and students alike through his black-framed glasses, was a Levi that Erwin didn't see too much of at home. He was in his element, a world of white lab coats and data that could not only be analyzed but replicated. The world this Levi lived in was painted in shades of white and black, each tone given its own specific number, its own specific result, things that were tangible and meant something. The world this Levi lived in was untainted by the shades of grey that infect humanity, was rigid in its rules, left no room for cloudy emotions. 

The world this Levi lived in was perfect, a place of check lists and to-do boxes and data tables, so there was no room for confusion.

Erwin sat back in his seat, watching intently as the chatter in the room began to die down as Levi cleared his throat. He was sure he wouldn't understand a single word. 

* * *

_ They had sat in Levi's office, spooning up fluffy forkfuls of white rice and red curry. Levi's office had been bare, devoid of decoration, every available surface piled high with neatly stacked papers and spreadsheets. Erwin had privately thought it looked like a jail cell, but he'd held his tongue because of the beaming look of pride Levi had given him over his shoulder as he'd ushered him in, making a small gesture to the nameplate outside the door which proclaimed in broad Helvetica that the office belonged to Levi Ackerman, Ph.D. Levi had worked hard for it, Erwin knew, had spent countless sleepless nights reviewing his dissertation and his arguments, practicing in front of Erwin though Erwin was quite sure he was far from the most qualified person to help.  _

_ The only decoration that Levi had in his office was a picture of him and Erwin, the frame slightly dusty and placed next to his computer monitor. It was one of them at Ghirardelli Square, sharing an ice cream sundae, the handles of two long-handled silver spoons emerging from the fluffy cloud of whipped cream on top. They had been laughing, sunglasses propped up on top of Levi's head and the beginnings of a sunburn already starting to make itself evident across the bridge of Erwin's nose. _

_ "So what do you do here all day?" Erwin had asked after they'd finished lunch. Levi jumped up, an eager, almost childlike smile on his face, and had taken Erwin out to the main part of the laboratory, where he'd handed him a lab coat that Erwin had barely been able to fit into.  _

_ "Sorry, that's the biggest one we have," Levi had said, almost apologetically, but he hadn't been able to keep his eyes from roaming over how the lab coat draped tightly across Erwin's frame. "But safety first, you know how it goes. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, or something like that."  _

_ Levi had shrugged a lab coat over his clothes, buttoning it up, and had tugged on purple latex gloves, indicating Erwin to do the same. He had showed Erwin around the lab with glee, a child in a candy store, as he explained what all the different machines did, what all the different tanks were for.  _

_ "And this one is for the flesh-eating beetles," Levi announced proudly, as though he were introducing his children to the president. The beetles in question were long, dark, shiny things that looked a tad bit like rather spiky caterpillars, and Erwin had almost shuddered at the thought of them escaping. "We prepare mice skeletons for the museum across the street also, so we need to deflesh them somehow."  _

_ "Oh, of course," Erwin had agreed, but he'd kept an eye on the tank even as Levi took his gloved hand and led him to another part of the lab.  _

* * *

"Good evening," Levi began, once the chatter had died down and the air was thick with expectation. "My name is Dr. Levi Ackerman, and I'm truly honored to have been invited to speak at this symposium. As I'm sure many of you already know, my current research revolves around sexual fitness and the mechanics of sexual selection involving the copulation plug that presents in Mus musculus females." Just as Erwin had expected, he understood not a word. "Before I begin my presentation, I would just like to thank the faculty and our illustrious donors for making research projects like this possible; I would like to thank the Ph.D. candidates and graduate students who run their own projects in the laboratory and have proven an invaluable resource for ensuring the constant maintenance and upkeep of the mice; and finally, I would like to thank the undergraduates who also assist in the laboratory and help keep the site clean and experiment-worthy. Oh, and to any of my students who are here tonight, yes, your midterm is still on Monday." Erwin couldn't help but smile; a sound, mingled laughter and good-natured groaning, rose up from the audience. Levi was smiling, and Erwin marveled, not for the first time, that he was married to this man. 

* * *

_ Over the years, whenever Erwin popped into Levi's office occasionally, a bag of takeout curry swinging from his wrist, he would smile at the gradual changes that happened in between one visit and the next. The original Ghirardelli Square picture was still there in its position of honor next to Levi's computer monitor, but more pictures, more color, had started to appear.  _

_ One of the pictures taken at their wedding had been placed proudly on Levi's desk. If Erwin recalled correctly, it had been taken during their first dance together. He had one of his hands on Levi's waist, the other clasping Levi's newly ringed hand, and their gazes had been so intensely trained on each other that he'd had no idea he had been stepping on Levi's toes until afterwards, when Levi had asked him if he had any plans on crippling him before his time.  _

_ A calendar of ducklings had appeared on the wall, neat red X's marking off the days that had already passed. A soft tartan blanket materialized, hanging over the back of Levi's swivel chair when he wasn't in and wrapped around him when he was. A small cactus in a bright pink pot had manifested itself on the other side of Levi's computer monitor.  _

_ The color leached in, shading the world of black and white with its streaks of uncertainty and vivaciousness.  _

* * *

Erwin tried to listen, to pay attention and figure out what about these mice had everyone so interested, but for the life of him he was absolutely at a loss when it came to the diagrams and time-lapse graphs that Levi was bringing up in his presentation. 

He watched him talking, his hands gesturing to emphasize his points, controlled and excited at the same time, and Erwin found it a privilege that he could still see the young man he'd once been in his movements. In that instant, Levi was twenty-five, his hair ebony, his vision sharp, excited about maybe having stumbled upon genetic indicators for potential alcohol abuse; in that instant, Levi was forty, his hair spattered with salt, his glasses perched elegantly on the bridge of his nose, calm and composed, the vivacity of youth burned out by the confidence and reserve of age. 

The student sitting next to him was scribbling down copious notes in a tattered leather-bound book, and Erwin smiled at his enthusiasm. He, too, remembered what it had been like to be young and hungry for information, smearing the sides of his hand with ink because he couldn't capture the words quickly enough.  

The student's frantic writing came to an abrupt halt, and Erwin came into the present again to find that Levi had stopped speaking. Erwin looked up. Levi was standing in profile, looking up at one of his slides, and though Erwin couldn't see his full expression, he could see the way Levi's hand was twitching by his thigh, the fingers curling and uncurling the way it did when he was nervous, gold gleaming and flashing in the hot bright lights trained on the podium. 

Erwin's fingernails bit crescents into his palm as the silence stretched on, long and tense. Levi turned back to the podium after a few long moments during which Erwin held his breath. "If you'll excuse me for a moment," he said into the microphone before turning and dipping behind the gap in the curtains that led to backstage. The crowd murmured amongst themselves, and the student flipped his notebook closed before turning to Erwin, who was in the process of trying to uncurl his own fingers. 

"You're Dr. Ackerman's husband, aren't you?" he asked, and Erwin turned to him. The student had brown hair that looked as though he'd just rolled out of bed, and turquoise eyes the color of the sea. "I'm Eren Jaeger," he said, sticking out a hand, which Erwin took. "I work in his lab, and you're in a lot of the pictures he has in his office." 

"Ah, yes," Erwin said, smiling to mask his worry. Levi had not yet returned, and he was debating whether or not to text him and ask him if he was feeling alright. "I've heard lots about you." 

"Oh." The boy looked equal parts awestruck and concerned. "Does he say good things about me?" 

"Of course," Erwin said absentmindedly, his eyes drawn to Levi's conspicuous absence. Where was he? Perhaps he'd come down with a sudden bout of food poisoning? 

"Is Dr. Ackerman feeling alright?" Eren asked, his eyebrows knitting with concern as he spoke half to himself, half to Erwin. "He's been doing this a lot." Erwin turned his head to look at him. 

"What do you mean?" he asked, cautiously, carefully. 

"Sometimes in lecture," Eren said, pulling out his phone to check a text message he'd gotten, "he just stops for a minute or two, like in the middle of a sentence or something. But maybe he's just had a lot on his mind," he hastened to say, catching the growing concern in Erwin's expression. "I'd be really nervous too if I had to present at a symposium." 

Nervousness is the gift of the young, the sweet terror of being rebuffed and corrected, of trying to make their way into a world that has already grown up. Levi's place in the cosmic workings of the universe had already been long established, and Erwin couldn't help but feel that something had gone horribly, terrifically wrong in the mechanism. 

"If you'll please excuse me," he said, standing and nudging gently by Eren, who drew his knees up to let him pass. "I'm just going to make sure he's okay."

* * *

Once he was outside the auditorium, in the cool quietness of the hallway, Erwin pulled out his phone to give Levi a call. 

He picked up on the second ring. 

"Levi, are you alright?" Erwin asked, injecting a forced calm into his voice. "You've been gone a few minutes." 

"I can't remember," Levi hissed, his voice half a sob. "I looked at that slide and I couldn't remember what it meant or why it was important. I'm going fucking insane." 

"Do you want me to come get you?" Erwin asked softly, after managing to swallow past the lump of dread in his throat. Here was the surf, cold and chilling and battering down the bluffs of memory. Levi was twenty-five, he was thirty-one, he was forty, and the man he'd become held fear and panic and the knife-edge of desperation in his voice as he whispered yes. 

* * *

 

Later that evening, Erwin had called the organizer of the event and sincerely apologized for the inconvenience, claiming that Levi had suddenly come down with a horrible migraine. She had tutted in sympathy, murmuring something about how it wasn't uncommon, she'd been telling the electrical engineers to install new lights for ages, the ones they had now were far too bright and hot, and she and the rest of the audience sincerely hoped Dr. Ackerman would recover soon.

The instant they'd gotten home, Levi had fled upstairs, waving away Erwin's offers of dinner, a cup of tea, a massage. Sensing that Levi wanted to be alone for the moment, Erwin microwaved some leftover spaghetti they had in the fridge, and sat down to a quiet dinner alone, thinking about the way Levi had been wringing his hands in his lap during the drive home, thinking about the way he'd refused to meet Erwin's eye. 

"Oh, Levi," he murmured quietly to himself as he studied his miniature upside down reflection in the titanium ring on his left hand. "What's going on?" 

* * *

 

An hour and a half later, after Erwin deemed that the worst of the storm had passed, he went upstairs with another reheated plate of spaghetti in one hand, a mug of steaming chamomile in the other. He came upon Levi in the spare bedroom, curled up in the window seat, his head buried in folded arms, in a position that surely couldn't have been comfortable. 

He tapped lightly on the door with his elbow to alert Levi to his entry. 

"I brought you dinner," he said softly as he approached. Levi turned to him, eyes red and bloodshot. "Can I join you?" 

Levi mumbled something unintelligible, but allowed Erwin to climb onto the window seat and cradle him in his lap. It was silent for a few minutes, the only sounds the scraping of silverware against the plate, of Levi's chewing and swallowing. 

"Levi, I've been thinking..." Erwin trailed off, wondering how best to broach the subject. 

"How best to kick me off to the loony bin?" Levi asked humorlessly. He took a sip of chamomile tea, and Erwin winced at the anger in his voice. 

"I was going to say that perhaps we should see a doctor," Erwin said gently, wrapping his arms around Levi and pressing a soft kiss to his neck. "I was sitting next to that student from your lab, Eren Jaeger, I think it was? He said that this apparently isn't just a one-time thing. Were you going to tell me, Levi?" 

Levi stiffened in his arms, rigid for a moment before he slumped, disappointed, wavering. "I didn't want you to be worried," he said after a long moment, his voice low and hushed. "I didn't want to be a burden." 

The moon was pulling the tide back in, soft and sweet and gentle with its seductive promises of security, and the two danced hand in hand, the surf calm and the roaring of the waves gone for the moment. 

"We'll make an appointment for next week," Erwin said, soft but decisive, and Levi nodded. 

When Erwin tilted his head to kiss him, Levi's mouth tasted like the sea. 


	15. The First Adoration, Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, because I have no firsthand experience, all of this comes from research I've done in regards to the disease and its methods of diagnosis. It appears that there aren't actually any foolproof diagnostic tests for Alzheimer's, and it's mostly ruling out other things it COULD be before making a diagnostic decision. Sorry for any inaccuracies; if there are any, please let me know!

The hospital smelled like antiseptic and disinfectant, layers of lemon and floor polisher sprayed hastily over decay and the smell of disease. Erwin tried not to breathe too deeply; the taste of rust embedded itself into the back of his throat, resting heavy on his tongue, and not for the first time, he thought that perhaps he was mistaken, that perhaps he would wake up from this dream any second now and Levi would be shaking him and slapping him lightly across the face, and scolding him that he'd had another nightmare again. But Levi was sitting next to him, shoulders slouched, eyes downcast as though ashamed. He was still, quiet, statuesque, the only concession to life the tight clutch he had on Erwin's hand. 

His lips were sealed tight together, pinched white as his eyes skittered over the linoleum tiles of the hospital floor as though counting them. They had made an appointment with a Dr. Grant Morgan at UCSF Medical Center, and he'd managed to fit them in three weeks from the date of the symposium. 

The three weeks in between then and now had been terrifying. Erwin watched Levi out of the corner of his eye, stepped out of more lunch meetings and into more of Levi's lectures because he had still been trying to convince himself that nothing was wrong, that they could still continue to live in the foolish paradise they'd created for themselves. He had hid out in the backs of the lecture halls, watching, his heart freezing in his chest every time Levi paused during a sentence, suspended animation, thought crystallizing into silence. 

Levi had always been an infuriating person to understand and be around, prickly and curled into himself until Erwin coaxed him out with promises of tenderness and subtle affection. They had had their share of fights and tears and make-up kisses, a veritable roller coaster of a relationship that had had Erwin spending countless sleepless nights with Levi's head pressing heavily against his shoulder and wondering if perhaps he shouldn't have gotten a dog instead. But, as exhilarating as their relationship had been, the past three weeks had aged Erwin more than the entirety of the sixteen years and handful of months they'd spent together. 

It was as though he'd gone to sleep one night and woken up the next morning to find an old man in the throes of a midlife crisis staring back at him from the mirror. 

As he squeezed Levi's fingers reassuringly, the smooth gold pressed into the side of his finger, reminding him of the commitment he'd taken upon himself. Levi's expression was unreadable at this angle, but Erwin thought that, despite everything that had happened and would happen, Levi would still be the best midlife crisis he could have asked for. 

Love was a beautiful disaster, the sweetest rose with the sharpest thorn, and Erwin's hands were bloodstained.

"Levi Ackerman?" The nurse's voice rang out, sharp and clear, and Levi stiffened next to him. He took a deep breath, his shoulders lifting, and Erwin squeezed his hand gently. 

"Do you want me to come with you?" he asked. 

The rose's petals unfurled, angling itself in the direction of the morning light, asking silently if it can trust. It decided that it can, and Levi nodded quickly, quietly, almost imperceptibly, and Erwin cradled the trust close to his heart as he stood up and followed Levi to where the nurse was waiting, holding the door open for them. 

* * *

 

Erwin hadn't always known how lucky he was. When he'd met Levi, they had been young, they had been foolish, the world had lain at their feet like an oyster begging to be claimed, and luck had seemed like a commodity, easily bought and just as easily given away. They had not a lick of money, but they had health, they had love, they had time. And at the time, that had seemed like all they would ever need. 

At twenty-six, Erwin hadn't known how valuable trust was. Levi was, then and now, a man who kept his secrets and his thoughts locked close to his heart, the key clasped tightly in his fist, which was ready to strike out at anyone who got too close for comfort. 

Erwin had suffered his fair share of blows, but the key had long ago been entrusted to his care. 

At thirty-five, Erwin had looked at Levi, who had been curled up against him, wrapped tight in blankets, breathing hoarse and rattling in his chest from a bad cold he'd caught the week before. He had looked, had examined, had realized suddenly that this beautiful, gorgeous, disastrous wreck of a man was his, the greatest treasure he would ever come to own. They had been married for three years at that point, and Erwin had still woken up some mornings wondering if he was still dreaming. 

He still felt like that sometimes, because at forty-three rapidly going on forty-four, Erwin Smith had realized that the things they'd had two decades earlier could no longer be taken for granted. They had money now, but money would not buy time, would not buy health, would not buy luck. Their love had endured, the roller coaster smoothing out into gentle steady slopes that Erwin had come to relish in their relaxation. 

As he followed Levi down the hallway, walls mint-green in an effort to replicate coolness and calm, he wondered if  the nervousness in the pit of his stomach signaled another drop ahead, one coming up to plummet them into a mad crescendo. And he wasn't quite sure if there was safety waiting at the bottom, the belts and tethers and guard rails secure and steady. He lost sight of Levi for a moment as he turned the corner ahead of him, and he wondered if the tracks were collapsing beneath them, wood and steel and glass shattering into oblivion.

* * *

 

A nurse takes Levi's weight (62.3 kg), his height (160 cm), his temperature (37.2 C), examines his blood pressure (130/89) and his heartbeat (87, Erwin thinks, though he can't read her scribbles at the angle she put him in in a plastic chair by the door). Levi looked defeated, tired, his age showing in the downcast expression he harbored in his eyes, his hands cradled, one in the other, in his lap. 

Erwin prayed to whatever divine powers might be listening that this would end up in nothing, that the doctor would walk in, take a glance at Levi's chart and his medical history, give Erwin a reassuring smile, and tell him to make sure Levi ate more red meat because it was just a slight iron deficiency. Erwin wanted to be told he had nothing to worry about, wanted to be promised that the sun would rise tomorrow, and the days and weeks and years after that. 

The nurse flipped to a fresh page on her clipboard, turned to Levi with her pen poised above the paper. She asked Levi a series of questions that Erwin could just as easily have answered for him. When she left, with a curt aside that the doctor would be in shortly, Erwin moved his chair towards the bench Levi was sitting on. His head was level with Levi's elbow at this height, and Levi ran a hand through his hair affectionately, absentmindedly. 

"You've got a lot of gray hair, old man," Levi said, his voice soft, lilting, a choking sort of sound at the edges of his words. "You're going to have to start dying it, or I'm afraid I'll have to trade you in for a newer model." 

Erwin reached up, took Levi's hand tight and secure in his own to ground them both. "I'll dye it red, blue, green, whatever color you want," he murmured, careful to keep his voice stable and even. Levi certainly didn't need any additional stress from his own personal feelings. "Just promise me you won't leave me. I don't think this old heart could take it." 

"Yeah." Levi's voice was the barest hint of a whisper. "I swear."

* * *

The doctor bustled in a mere fifteen minutes later, stethoscope slung jauntily around his neck, and Erwin stood up, reassured by the firm handshake Dr. Morgan had. He was youth and vivacity, eyes bright and hair disheveled, a strength that erwin found calming. 

"So then, Levi, what seems to be the problem?" he asked after the introductions had already been made, taking a practiced eye at the charts. "It says on your appointment that you've having a few memory problems lately?" 

"I...yes, that's correct," Levi murmured, clearing his throat, and Erwin felt as though he could see the words crystallizing in the air in front of them, a solid and tangible admittance of weakness and vulnerability. Levi's words were guarded, still unsure of how much to reveal, and Erwin wanted to tear away the knit armor Levi had wrapped tight around himself, and yet he was afraid of what he would find. Darkness was infectious, and Erwin was not yet ready, might never be ready to lose himself without a flame. 

"Why don't you tell me about it?" Dr. Morgan asked, looking at Levi with rapt attention. 

Erwin listened to his husband talking, not looking up at Levi. Perhaps if he pretended the words were coming from someone else, they wouldn't be true. He had never quite mastered the art of sticking his head in the sand, though, and every word that he didn't want to listen to engraved itself in his mind, carved special niches for the syllables to ensure that Erwin would never forget. 

* * *

_This is the day that will define the rest of my life,_ Erwin remembered thinking to himself at the altar, surrounded by family and friends and the scent of calla lilies. Levi had been reciting his vows, pale and shaking and Erwin's hands clasped tightly in his own as if he couldn't bear to let go, as if letting go would be the death of him. 

_This is the day that will define the rest of my life,_ Erwin remembered thinking to himself in bed, as he found that Levi fit perfectly into the hollow in his arms, filling a space that he hadn't known had been left wanting. 

_This is the day that will define the rest of my life,_ Erwin thought to himself now as Levi performed a series of simple tasks to check for potential neurological damage, the soles of his shoes squeaking on the polished tiles of the examination room floor. _And nothing after this will be the same._

* * *

Dr. Morgan sent them down to the laboratory for some other tests, confident smile still affixed in place. The phlebotomist in the laboratory took samples of Levi's blood, and Erwin watched, half fascinated and half horrified as Levi held out his arm, wincing only the slightest bit as the needle slipped into creamy skin and drew out spurts of crimson that coated and filled the insides of one, two, six glass tubes that the technician capped and labeled meticulously. It was shocking, a surprise that shouldn't have come as one. Erwin had spent so much of his life idolizing Levi, putting him on a pedestal, the finest crystal and china, that he'd forgotten he too could bleed. 

The technician gave Levi a pad of gauze to press against the injection site to stanch the flow, and when she beckoned him to take his hand away so she could wrap a bright red bandage around the crook of his elbow, Erwin found that the tips of Levi's fingers came away bloodstained. 

* * *

They left the hospital several vials of blood lighter and no wiser than before. Levi cradled his left arm protectively as Erwin got into the driver's seat of the car and slotted the key into the ignition. 

"Does it hurt?" Erwin asked quietly with a sideways glance. 

Levi didn't answer, and Erwin sighed before taking a look over his right shoulder and reversing the car out of the parking space. 

The drive home was silent, and though it was a clear day and the sun was setting beautifully over the arches of the Golden Gate Bridge, Erwin couldn't seem to appreciate it today. The world was beautiful, and it was cruel in its loveliness, because Levi had no right to be so stunning, amber and golden highlights shading the side of his face that Erwin could see. 

But, as Erwin knew quite well, we don't adore beautiful things because they last forever. We love them because they don't, and Levi had never looked more gorgeous. 

* * *

Erwin was almost asleep when Levi rolled over to bury his head into the crook of Erwin's neck. Erwin, still half-asleep, lifted a heavy hand to card through soft silky strands of hair, still slightly damp from the late shower Levi had taken. 

"Yes." Levi's whisper was muffled against Erwin's skin, and though Erwin hadn't asked him anything, he knew, almost immediately, which question Levi was answering. Tears, wet and warm, pooled in the hollow of Erwin's throat, Levi's shuddery breaths heavy in the darkness, and Erwin flung away his reservations, flung away his fear, because he could no longer afford to wait for a guiding light. Levi was wounded, bleeding, _hemorrhaging_ , and the roses were wilting in the fall, petals drooping and fluttering to the ground, leaving naked buds and stems and stalks in the flurry of time.   



	16. The First Fear, Again

Limbo was the worst feeling, the feeling of freefall, of the uncertainty of what might happen in the next instant, in the next breath, in the next moment, and Erwin and Levi had been living in isolated stasis for the week and a half it took for the medical center's laboratory to phone them back and inform them that their physician was ready to go over the results of the blood and urine tests at their earliest convenience. 

They waited with bated breath now, in Dr. Morgan's office, hands clasped tightly together over the rigid wood of the armrests of their chairs. Out of the corner of his eye, Erwin could see Levi worrying his lower lip between his teeth, the pink turning white under the pressure. Levi's lips had always been chapped, but more so than recently, flaking and bleeding beneath the lightest hint of the kindest touch, and Erwin found himself tasting copper whenever Levi kissed him. 

They'd been kissing a lot the last week and a half, mouths pressed tight together in the hopes of finding salvation and safety in proximity. Erwin had found himself underneath Levi at least five times in the past eleven days, and while any other time he would have been amazed, surprised, delighted by this sudden upsurge in Levi's libido, the meetings and intertwining of their bodies, tangled in the sheets, back pressed into the couch cushions, clothes messy and pushed aside, still tangled around slick limbs, all of it felt like desperation in the face of futility. It was a horrible, mortal bucket list, as if the ship were sinking rapidly, as if the darkness of the water was rushing up to meet them and there was nothing left to do but love and kiss and fuck because they might not get another chance. 

Levi's unspoken anguish infected Erwin, rooting itself deep into his soul when he wasn't looking. Agony and anxiety make good bedfellows, and flourish in dark places; left unchecked, the vines become kudzu, overtaking everything in their depressive, oppressive mania, overrunning thoughts with frantic possibilities, each one worse than the last. Erwin was suffocating, asphyxiating, and he couldn't even begin to imagine what it must have felt like for Levi. 

Now, as they sat together in Dr. Morgan's office, waiting for him to come back with Levi's file, Erwin stroked the back of Levi's hand with his thumb and prayed that the doctor would bring back a machete, rags soaked in gasoline and a torch, anything to burn away the vines that had massed themselves in the pits of their stomachs.

* * *

 

_ At the very start, Erwin had been downright terrified to be anywhere near Levi. It had been hard to quantify their relationship in a dictionary term; boyfriends was far too intimate, and acquaintances far too distant. They had been firmly stuck in the murky in-between, and Erwin had been afraid to say the wrong thing, to step out of line, because even then he had been terrified of losing the treasure the universe had chosen, in some fit of a cosmic joke, to entrust him with.  _

_ They had been young and hesitant, glorious in their uncertainty, each and every day a riot of nerves and excitement. Erwin had dreaded it then, the anxiety in the pit of his stomach whenever he would propose something to Levi, fear of being mocked or disdained. Time had calmed them; Levi had become more of a well-read book, pages soft and well-thumbed, the plot understandable and lovely in its predictability, and Erwin had become his devoted reader.  _

_ But, in yet another fit of selfish amusement, the author had decided to throw in a plot twist, a set of new chapters that had Erwin scrabbling frantically, rifling desperately through the pages back to the very introduction to find what information he'd missed and how it changed the tale ahead. New characters had come into the picture, crawling across the page and taking over the story with inky fingers of doubt, darkening the paper so that Erwin could hardly make out the words that he had once known so well.  _

* * *

 

"How much do you want to bet it's cancer?" Levi asked him now, his voice quiet and monotone, barely audible over the blood pulsing through his head that Erwin was all too aware of. He turned to him, incredulous, but Levi's gaze was affixed firmly on a glass paperweight that Dr. Morgan had on his desk. His face was still, unmoving, his expression unchanged, and Erwin almost wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. This wasn't in the script, it wasn't in the playbook that he'd seen. A sharp pain ran up his left arm, and he looked down to find that his hand had curled itself around the gnarled wood of the armrest, white knuckled in its grip. 

"Don't say that," Erwin hissed, forcibly uncurling his fingers and stretching them. "Don't you dare say that." 

"You're angry because you thought about it, also." Levi still refused to look at him, though surely Erwin's stare must have been boring into the side of his head with its intensity and despair. 

Had he thought about it? Yes, he supposed he had, dark nights when he was feeling particularly masochistic and Levi had fallen asleep against his chest, hair sweaty and stomachs sticky from their latest activities. Yes, he supposed his mind had jumped to that possibility, his fingernails cutting scarlet crescents into his palms because he couldn't bear imagining a bedroom, a house, a life without Levi. But it was different, hearing it voiced out loud, a screenwriting direction spoken when it wouldn't have been, and he wanted to cover his ears, wanted to pretend that he had never heard it, wanted to believe that they could still be members of the audience, unaware of the Exit Stage Lefts and Enter Stage Rights. 

"Levi. I can't," Erwin murmured, his voice almost a hiss, and Levi winced as Erwin squeezed his hand tight, tight, too tight. "I can't -" 

He was interrupted as the door clicked open, and in unison they looked up to find Dr. Morgan, white lapels on a snowy coat reassuringly folded, a manila folder in hand. His expression was neutral, and Erwin couldn't decide if that were a good or bad thing. 

But here he was. Here was God, here was their avenging angel, sitting down in front of them and adjusting his white wings as he sat. Here was Satan, here was their devil, sitting down in front of them and opening the folder as he cleared his throat to sentence them to a lifetime of sulphur and brimstone. Erwin held his breath, waiting for his judgment, waiting for purgatory. 

"Mr. Ackerman" - and here it was, here was the sentence - "your results are perfectly normal." 

Erwin was speechless, and Levi gaped at Dr. Morgan across the table. Erwin wasn't medically gifted in any sense, but he was fairly certain that normal results were good, were more than good, were excellent. Before he could say anything, Dr. Morgan continued. 

"Are your memory problems still present?" 

Levi swallowed, almost audible, taking a breath that Erwin could feel from the slackening grip he had on Levi's fingers. "Yes, they...they are." 

Dr. Morgan closed the file gently with a wisp of paper rustling. He looked across the table at the two of them, bright green eyes examining, studying, and Erwin wanted to hide from the intensity of his scrutiny. 

"Normally, I would suggest perhaps it's stress-related, but I'm not quite certain that's the case, especially since this has been going on for a bit of time from what you've told me." Dr. Morgan picked up the paperweight, which was clear glass in the shape of a pyramid, and tossed it absentmindedly from hand to hand, his elbows planted firmly on the mahogany of his desk. Erwin followed the crystal trajectory, prisms of light and refraction, and wondered if perhaps he was dreaming. 

"Given that, I would like you to have you undergo some more tests," Dr. Morgan continued, but Erwin could barely hear him over the rush of blood in his head. Limbo, again. Infinity stretched out in front of him, a series of mirrors, some reflecting Levi, some not. He couldn't begin to count the universes that detailed Levi's absence, couldn't even bring himself to wonder if he had a choice in the matter. 

Dr. Morgan was talking about brain scans, psychological evaluations, and Erwin felt the vines amassing in the pit of his stomach, dark and thick and tangling, wrapping themselves around his windpipe so that he couldn't speak. He was vaguely aware of Levi nodding beside him, following the medical terms with ease, and he was jealous of his calm, of his peace. 

* * *

_ Erwin remembered asking Levi what he was most terrified of, one lazy fall evening when the light was still staining gold across their peeling wallpaper in the apartment that they'd used to own. Levi was lying beside him, out of breath, limbs sticky and sweaty from sex, and Erwin recalled that he had paused, rolled over, eyebrow arched and strands of damp dark hair falling into his gaze.  _

_ "What's brought this on, then?" Levi had asked, his voice curious. "Are we talking about Halloween-scary or real life-scary?"  _

_ "Either. Both," Erwin had replied, absentmindedly reaching out and brushing the hair out of Levi's face. Levi had looked at him contemplatively, and he'd cradled the side of his face in his palm, thumb at the corner of Levi's eye, feeling the flutter of eyelashes with every blink.  _

_ "Why do you ask?" Levi had been cautious, guarded. Erwin didn't remember exactly what he had said; it had been something offhanded, something quirky, something lighthearted and joking.  _

_ "I'm afraid of vampires, werewolves, tentacle monsters," Levi had ticked off on his fingers, while Erwin watched him incredulously, a laugh bubbling in his throat. "But in all seriousness," he'd murmured when the laughter had died down, "I think I'd be the most afraid of being forgotten."  _

_ "Being forgotten?" Erwin had asked, quirking a fearsome eyebrow at Levi, which set him off into another fit of giggles. They had been young and high on life and nerves and ecstasy, where vampires and the monsters under the bed were the least of their worries.  _

_ "Yeah, like not having an impact on the world or anything at all," Levi had murmured, his eyes soft and contemplative. "Or just being one of the billions. We spend so much time trying to do be recognised in life that we get to our death beds without realising it."  _

_ They had been young and vivacious, and death had never seemed imminent. They had been glorious in their vitality, amazing in their youth, and they had lived and loved and laughed violently, vigorously, because there was no end in sight and they were immortal.  _

_ They would live forever.  _

* * *

 

Erwin felt unbalanced, leaving the hospital; he had come with Levi to seek answers, to seek redemption and comprehension, and had left with more inquiries than he'd started out with. No news was good news, certainly, but no news was also terrifying, an indication that no one had the correct solution. They made appointments, penciling Levi's name into time slots for MRIs and psychiatric reviews, and the vines had started to grow voracious, strong, thick, tearing down the shingles and arches of the support that Erwin had erected around his sanity. He wondered if Levi felt the same way.  

On the drive home, Levi's hand reached out, as if by its own free will, placing itself lightly on top of Erwin's on the gear shift. 

"I'm sorry. It was in bad taste, the cancer thing." Levi's voice seemed disembodied. "It's just frustrating, not being able to pin this on something concrete." A sigh. "Maybe I'm going insane." 

Levi's palm was smooth against the knuckles of his hand. "Maybe we'll go insane together," Erwin murmured, blinking away the gloss of tears that had appeared in his eyes. "They'll give us adjacent rooms in the psychiatric ward so I can visit you every day."

Levi laughed, but his laugh was dry, mirthless. "You can't go mad, Erwin. You're far too stable for that." In a quieter voice, one that Erwin had to strain to hear over the sounds of traffic, "...and if you go mad, too, who will remember me?" 

"I don't think I could forget you even if I tried," Erwin whispered, his voice clogged. There was traffic, cars bumper to bumper, and they were stalled, no clear road to progress ahead. "Sorry," Erwin murmured at the questioning look Levi gave him. "I've just got the sun in my eye." He hastily lifted a sleeve to scrub at his eyes. 

When he looked back, Levi was holding out a handkerchief to him. He took it, the pretense gone, shivering away in the wake of reality. "Even stable people cry, Erwin," Levi said, and Erwin wanted to laugh at how absurd the situation was; it should have been the other way around, but life has a way of irony that baffles even the most astute. "I'd be a bit concerned if you weren't scared." 

* * *

_ After he'd answered the question, Levi had asked, "And you? What are you most afraid of?"  _

_ Erwin had listed a variety of things, from spiders to snakes to sharks, and Levi had laughed, endorphins and absurdity and youth.  _

_ "I don't know what I'm afraid of," Erwin had admitted finally. "I don't think I've run into anything worthy of fear yet."  _

_Levi had let it go at that, propping himself up on an elbow and getting up to go take a shower. After a few moments, Erwin had joined him, and the discussion had dissolved away with the soap suds swishing down the drain._  

But now, sitting hand in hand with his heart, Erwin thought that perhaps he'd finally found an answer to the twenty-year-old question. 


	17. The First Failures, Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, no personal experience with adoption/adoption agencies or anything of the sort, so all of this comes from research/other books I've read. Apologies if anything is incorrect or insensitively portrayed.
> 
> In addition, according to the [Alzheimer's Association](http://www.alz.org/national/documents/checklist_10signs.pdf), "The mood and personalities of people with Alzheimer's can  
> change. They can become confused, suspicious, depressed, fearful or anxious. They may be easily upset  
> at home, at work, with friends or in places where they are out of their comfort zone." That's kind of the basis for this chapter.

They had been so wrapped up in Levi's medical affairs that, both of them, memory problems or not, had managed to forget about the interviews and home study they'd arranged with the adoption agency. If it hadn't been for the alarm Erwin had set right after hanging up the phone with the agency what felt like ages ago, an alarm that buzzed violently two days before the appointment, vibrating itself off the mahogany desk in his office and cracking itself on the hardwood floors, the social worker and agency representative would have been left outside the house, knocking and ringing the doorbell on what turned out to be one of the stormiest days of the year. Erwin had managed to reschedule all but one of the meetings on his agenda for the day, a dreary Thursday in the beginning of October, and because Levi didn't teach classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, it was with a reluctance and a sense of foreboding that Erwin asked him if he would be able to deal with the home study, at least until Erwin got home. 

"If it doesn't run over, and if there's not too much traffic, I'll be able to get back at 2:30," Erwin had said, forcing reassurance into his voice, unsure if he was trying to convince Levi or himself. The social worker and agency representative were slated to arrive at 2 PM, and that particular morning, Levi had seemed in control of himself, his eyes sharp and clear and alert as Erwin kissed him on the forehead before leaving for work. 

He had barely noticed the drive to work, had barely noticed the angry shouts and honks he received as he merged onto the expressway absentmindedly, cutting off a few other drivers and leaving the sounds of rubber squealing along asphalt behind him. The home was spotless, it wasn't anything to worry about, Erwin had lived in spotless environments ever since Levi had moved in with him. 

* * *

_ When Erwin had asked Levi to move in with him, he had been surprised to head over to Levi's tiny matchbox of an apartment that he shared with two other grad students to find that Levi's worldly possessions could be piled into a few cardboard boxes that didn't even fill the backseat of Erwin's old Nissan sedan. Levi had waved away his offers of help, piling his belongings carefully into boxes whose flaps he labelled neatly in a clear, thick Sharpie, "Kitchen," "Bathroom," "Closet." The bathroom box had been the fullest, the heaviest, probably due to the multiple cans of Comet bathtub cleaner that he pulled out later, frowning at the ring of grime that encircled the drain of the shower in Erwin's cracker box apartment.  _

_ He had allowed Erwin to help him unpack, and Erwin had been delighted to find that Levi's clothes fit perfectly in the drawers that he'd cleared out, hung lovely to fill in the empty quarter foot of the clothes rod in the closet he'd allocated for him. Levi's belongings had filled in the empty spaces in the apartment, and though it certainly hadn't been a place where they'd been inclined to spend the rest of their lives, Levi made it a place to feel like home. His chipped mug went next to Erwin's in the kitchen cabinet, the rim of the cup flaking and cutting Erwin's lip when he'd pulled it out for coffee in a sleep-deprived haze. His toothbrush lined up neatly with Erwin's, occupying the left side of the sink, its head resting in the hollow of a shared tube of toothpaste.  _

_ Erwin recalled that Levi had been doing a thorough scrubbing of his kitchen sink, sleeves rolled up to his elbows as his forearms plunged into the steaming sudsy water while Erwin unpacked the rest of his things. He had been talking to Levi about something, and had reached into the box without looking, wincing as his fingers jammed against something hard and glassy.  _

_ He had pulled out a framed photograph, had examined it under the harsh buzzing fluorescence of the kitchen lights, his legs collecting pins and needles from his seated position on the tile floor. Levi had been absorbed in his task of returning Erwin's kitchen to sanitary levels, and Erwin had taken the opportunity to study the photograph some more. The wood had felt smooth beneath his fingertips, and the glass was clean and clear despite the fact that the photograph underneath was worn, creased along the left third of the paper as though it had been folded or crumpled before being smoothed out and placed in its frame.  _

_ It looked like a graduation photo, Levi standing in between two people whom Erwin presumed were Levi's parents. The man, on the left, had a hand on Levi's shoulder, a stiff smile on his face like a cardboard cutout, and the glare from the sun on the man's glasses had shaded his expression from view. The woman on Levi's other side had a wistful smile on her face; she was pale, slender, beautiful in the way only those with one foot firmly set in the next world can be. The Levi in the picture was young, youthful, his smile lovely and uninhibited, the golden tassel of his graduation cap framing the side of his face, his diploma held proudly in front of him. Erwin had squinted to read the words: "Lowell High School" was emblazoned proudly across the top.  _

_ The sound of scrubbing had stopped, and when Erwin looked up, he found Levi gazing down at him, at the photograph he held in his hand, his expression inscrutable. He had started to apologise, had started to scramble for an excuse, but Levi had spoken, then, his words saving Erwin the trouble.  _

_ "They're my parents." Levi's voice had been dull, his words quiet, barely discernible from the rather frightening buzzing the lightbulb was giving off.  _

_ Levi had sat down beside him, making no comment about the, frankly, disgusting state of Erwin's kitchen floor, his back pressed against the wood of the sink cabinet, his hands still wet. Erwin had watched a soap bubble dissolve into the join of Levi's middle and ring fingers.  _

_ "Do you miss them?" Erwin had asked. Innocuous. Innocent. He had been expecting a generic answer, something that could be said and then duly forgotten because it was what was expected.  _

_ Levi had reached out, wet skin against his own, had taken the picture frame from his hand and studied it carefully, as if it were the first time he was seeing it, though the picture had been taken at least over five years ago.  _

_ "I haven't talked to my dad in a long time," Levi had murmured, his thumb pressing against the glass over his father's face. Erwin had been surprised. "I think Mom begged him to be in this picture with us. It's...the last picture I have with her."  _

_ Erwin's breath had caught in his throat.  _

* * *

It wasn't the home that Erwin was worried about. They had made the once imposing house into a comforting and lived-in dwelling, clean and airy and a lovely place for a child to grow up in. His fingers had tightened on the steering wheel as he'd almost violently merged into the carpool lane, ignoring the irate honks from other drivers. He glanced over at the empty passenger seat, fully convinced that his burdens would be there, its ghostly pressure burrowing into the leather seat, a visible manifestation of his anxieties. 

A ticket was the least of his worries. 

* * *

_ "She was sick here," Levi had said, his eyes quiet. Erwin remembered thinking it odd that Levi hadn't been crying, his voice clear and steady, albeit a little quiet. "I'd known she was sick, of course, it's hard to not notice, but I guess I didn't realize how sick she was." He had run a reflective thumb over his image, wetting the glass and rubbing away its clarity.  _

_ "I'm sorry," Erwin had said, shocked into sobriety. The lemon dish soap Levi had been using seemed acerbic, stinging against his nose. Everything was too bright, everything was too much.  _

_ "It's not even like she did anything wrong." Levi's voice had been contemplative, slight hints of defeat coloring the syllables, as though he'd long ago accepted the never-changing facts of his past. "She didn't smoke, wore lots of sunscreen every day, looked both ways before crossing the street. It was ovarian cancer. At the very least, it was quick, so that's something, isn't it?"  _

_ "I'm sorry." Erwin had sounded like a broken record, but he had run out of words. "I'm so sorry, Levi." Levi's fingers had been slick between his own as he reached out for Levi's hand.  _

* * *

He spent the morning doodling absentmindedly on a yellow legal pad, watching the rain streak down the glass windows of his office. 

A child, huh? he thought to himself as he scribbled concentric circles into the page. His heart ached at the thought. He, they, had longed for a child, children, for the high-pitched, clear, sweet laughter that would infuse the house and the soft smacking sounds of little feet up and down the stairs, fingerprints on the banisters that Levi would scowl at but wouldn't comment on. 

But with Levi the way he was now, Erwin wasn't sure that accepting a child into their life was the most brilliant idea. It seemed like an additional strain, a burden, that, no matter how joyful, would still entail responsibilities that he wasn't sure they could handle now, perhaps ever. 

He imagined a child, a lovely little girl with plump rosy cheeks, tugging on his sleeve and asking him to "please help me with my homework, Papa." Her and Levi baking cookies, bending over to peer into the oven, tiny starfishes of hands pressed against the glass to watch the dough rising, chocolate chips melting. The three of them, sitting on the swing on the front porch, sipping glasses of sweet tea and watching the fireflies dance in the garden. 

He sighed wistfully, the pen limp in his hand, the page in front of him scattered with doodles. It was a good dream to have, but Erwin thought that he should probably wake up now. 

He tore off the yellow page at its perforation, crumpled it, and tossed it into the wire trash bin beneath his desk. 

* * *

_ "And Dad..." Levi's voice had trailed off as he looked at the man in the picture frame. "I stopped being his son the moment I came out."  _

_ Erwin had reached out, tentatively, wrapping an arm around Levi's shoulders. But Levi's voice had remained stable as he placed the photograph back in the box. "It's no big loss, I suppose. You can be my daddy, if you want." There had been a slight smile playing around his mouth as he had grasped Erwin's shirt front and pressed a kiss to his lips. _

_ Erwin had laughed suddenly, surprised, distracted, and he hadn't seen the photograph since. _

* * *

The meeting ended on time, and Erwin found himself pulling into the driveway of his house in the early afternoon right on time, like he'd said he'd be. There was an unfamiliar car parked on the gravel, a deep blue Honda Civic with an Oregon licence plate, and with a heavy heart, Erwin pushed the gear shift of his Toyota into park, gravel crunching beneath his tires as he pulled up next to it. He would wait until afterwards, until the social worker and the agency representative were gone, driving safely away, to tell Levi about his doubts. 

The clock on his dashboard read 2:24 PM; it afforded him six minutes of weakness, and he buried his face in his hands, taking deep breaths to try and calm himself, to take the time to erase the doubts and the "I could have been's" from his mind. 

_ I could have been a father.  _

_ I could have been a better husband. _

_ I could have tried to be the man I said I would be when I grew up. I could have tried, but I didn't, not hard enough.  _

At 2:30 precisely, he took a deep breath, extricated himself from the tangle of his seat belt, and headed for the front door. 

* * *

Levi, the social worker, and the agency representative were sitting at the kitchen table, the smell of coffee dark and rich in the air and a plate of butter cookies placed neatly in the center. 

"Oh, hello, Mr. Smith!" The agency representative stood up, a bouncy young daisy of a woman wearing a yellow sundress despite the murky weather outside. She held out a hand with perfectly manicured French nails, and Erwin took it, wondering how old she was, and then mentally chastising himself. "We're so glad you could make it. We've taken a look around the house; let me just say I love what you've done with the extra bedroom upstairs. I love the animal stencils along the bottom, I'm sure it would make any kid happy. We're just finishing up Mr. Ackerman's personal interview, and then we can move on to the interview of the both of you." 

The social worker stood up, solidity in contrast. She was thin, her hair pulled back tightly into a chignon at the back of her neck, firm lines bracketing her mouth that indicated she wouldn't be taking nonsense from anyone. Erwin could feel her eyes roving over him, scrutinizing him, assessing his capabilities and somehow finding him lacking. There was a clipboard on the table in front of her seat, and Erwin tried to stop his gaze from flicking over to it as he shook her hand, which was weathered, blistered, rugged. 

She indicated a seat next to Levi, and Erwin pulled out the chair, the scraping noise of the wood against the floor grating to his ears. 

"We just have a few more questions, Mr. Ackerman," the agency representative said as they sat back down, smiling in a manner that felt too happy, too fake. Beside him, Levi nodded, barely perceptible. Erwin could feel rigidity and tenseness radiating off him, in the set of his shoulders, in the firm press of his lips. 

"Adopting a child is an enormous decision, as I'm sure you know," the rep said. "What methods of support do you have for this new transition in your life? Friends, grandparents, the like?" The social worker clicked her pen open, the tip poised over the clipboard. 

Levi paused, as though in thought. "Erwin's parents are fantastic," he said after a long silence. "I have no doubt they'd love to have a grandchild." 

The rep looked at Levi. "And you, Mr. Ackerman?" she asked, gently, and Erwin appreciated the way she tempered her words. "What about your parents?" 

"No, they...they're not in the picture," Levi said finally, the words forcing themselves out of his mouth. The social worker scribbled furiously, the nib of the pen scratching roughly across the paper. 

"I see. I'm sorry to hear that," the rep said, softly, before hastily taking a sip of her coffee. "As I'm sure you can understand, we prefer to place children with parents who have a good support system in place to help them, and their new child, make a fluid transition into life as a family." 

Erwin was vaguely aware of Levi's hand curling into a fist in its position against his knee. 

"So, what you're really saying is no." Levi's voice was strange, strained, and Erwin looked over fully now. His husband's teeth were gritted, and the muscles of his arm were locked, knuckles white. 

"Er, excuse me?" the rep asked, tone confused. Erwin was fully aware that the social worker had stopped writing, was watching them, eyes avid and bright. 

"What I mean is," Levi took a deep breath, and Erwin could almost taste his anger in his exhalations, "that's the final straw, isn't it? The last strike? Whatever metaphor you want to use. You won't approve us because my mother died of ovarian cancer, so there's that whole concept of poor health running through the line, because I don't talk to my father anymore, because we don't have this quote unquote support system that other parents might have." The words tripped over each other, and Erwin watched, half horrified, half fascinated, at the outpour, the deluge matching the one outside. 

"Mr. Ackerman, please, it's not -" Seriousness now, the naivete of youth dissipating. But Levi cut her off. 

"And certainly being gay is already a strike against us." Levi was seething, and Erwin turned away slightly, because he found he could no longer stand the inferno of Levi's anger. "It's alright, you don't have to say it. Just say no, we can't approve you for adoption, and we can all move on with our lives." 

"Levi..." Erwin's voice was barely a whisper, and he wasn't sure that Levi had heard until Levi turned to him, a holy nova of fury that Erwin felt searing him to the core. "Levi, calm down, please." 

A horrified sort of look had come over the representative's face, a grim type of knowledge and - was that a demented form of satisfaction? - on the social worker's. Erwin didn't, wouldn't, couldn't be bothered to analyze their expressions, because this was a Levi that he had never met, and he wanted to reach out, grasp him by the shoulders, and beseech him to let the real Levi come back. 

"Perhaps we should come back at a better time?" The representative was already standing, smoothing down the front of her yellow sundress, already making a hasty retreat to the front door. She gave a nervous little laugh as she pushed her chair back in, the sound grating harshly into Erwin's mind. "People are always grumpy in this sort of weather," she murmured with a vague wave out the kitchen window, where rain was streaking across the glass rapidly, washing out the world outside. 

Levi remained firmly in his seat, arms crossed across his chest, as Erwin showed them out, apologizing profusely for his unwarranted behavior. He watched out the front window as the deep blue Civic pulled out of the driveway, reversing neatly and quickly before moving out of sight, trying to ignore the migraine that was starting to build itself a nest in the base of his skull. 

Levi was still sitting, rooted in place, when he returned to the kitchen. 

"Levi. What the hell was that?" Erwin asked, but there was no real vitriol behind his tone. He was too tired, more tired than he'd been in a long time, too fatigued to give his words the proper emotional context. 

And, as rigid as he'd been earlier, Levi's limbs unlocked, his arms falling to his sides, his body loose as he slumped back in his chair. 

"I'm sorry, Erwin," he murmured after a while, his head tilted up, looking at Erwin out of the corner of his eye. "I know this...was really important to you, and I kind of just fucked everything up. Again. I seem to be doing that a lot lately." 

For lack of anything better to say, Erwin reached out, took a butter cookie off the plate in front of them and popped it into his mouth. It tasted like sawdust, dry and heavy against his tongue. 

"Why are you still with me?" The question was so soft, so unbelievable, that at first Erwin thought he had imagined it. But when he looked at Levi, Levi's gaze was half-lidded, gazing at him, the fury of ten minutes ago dissipated, dissolved. "I'm a mess, Erwin. Surely you've realized this by now, too. You deserve someone who'll make you happy and who you can have a family with. I could have been that someone a few years ago, but...I'm not so sure anymore." 

There it was, the I could have been. Erwin thought it was the most depressing start to a sentence he'd ever heard. He reached out, placing a hand firmly over Levi's on the kitchen table. His hand was thin, thinner than Erwin remembered, and he found that he could rotate the golden ring that Levi had been wearing for sixteen years now around his finger. It had been perfectly sized, perfectly fit, and now it was loose, and Erwin didn't want to begin to consider the implications of that. 

"You need to eat more, Levi," he murmured absentmindedly, pinching the bridge of his nose in an attempt to stave off the migraine that was starting to dig needle claws into his mind. "You've lost weight. All this stress isn't good for you." 

"It's not good for you, either," Levi said, his voice shivery, the pauses between his words punctured with the soft rolling of thunder in the distance. "I'm not good for you." 

"Don't say that." Erwin's voice was weaker than he would have liked. "You're the best thing that's ever happened to me." 

Levi laughed, the sound bitter. "Some life you must have led." 

Erwin reached over, tugging Levi towards him until Levi allowed himself to be pulled into Erwin's lap. His fingers danced across Erwin's collarbones, loosening his tie. Erwin sighed, reaching up to tuck Levi's head against his neck, listening to his soft exhales as the rain pounded furiously against the glass house they'd built for themselves. It was shattering, cracking, and they were soaked through. 

"You make me happy, Levi," Erwin murmured, his voice nearly drowned out by the force of the storm. "You make me happy." The room grew dark around them, neither getting up to turn on the lights as the afternoon passed, the shadows skittering across the walls, coffee growing cold in the porcelain cups on the table, Erwin attuning himself to the way Levi's breaths slowed down, even and deep against his skin. 

He stood up, back twinging slightly at the strain as he ascended the stairs, Levi's limbs draped over the creases of his elbows. 

"You make me happy." Whispered against Levi's forehead, uncreased and free from worry in the depths of his slumber, as Erwin lay him down carefully on their bed. 

Erwin sighed as he straightened back up. Levi looked so small from this angle, limbs flung out in abandon, childlike, porcelain. And thin. Far too thin, reversion back to twenty-five and near poverty. The lightning outside lit up the planes of Levi's face as he slept on, oblivious, lost in his dreams. Erwin sincerely hoped he was having good ones. 

As he headed back along the upstairs hallway, aiming to go back to the kitchen to take a few Advil and maybe make a cup of soup, Erwin passed by the open door of the extra bedroom, the one they had been in the never-ending process of converting into a nursery. He paused for a moment, leaning against the door jamb, taking in the details. White gauze curtains framing the bay window, the window seat decorated with all manner of cushions, a tartan blanket folded neatly on one side for extra warmth and comfort while one got lost in the universe of a novel. Green walls, somewhere between new grass an mint chocolate chip, a color that should have been cool and calming but which now only served to remind Erwin of the hallways of the hospital. Animals, stenciled and painted painstakingly over hours and days and weeks, giraffes and elephants and zebras marching along the bottom of the walls. It was the perfect room for a child, close enough to their bedroom for comfort during storms and after nightmares; it was the perfect room for a teenager, far enough from their bedroom for privacy and the glorious isolation of adolescence. 

_ I could have been a father, in a different universe, in a different world, in a different lifetime.  _

Erwin sighed, shaking away the thoughts that had started to clutter his mind, and reached out to click the door closed. 


	18. The First Love, Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter that everyone has been waiting for. This marks the halfway point of the story.

Erwin took a sip of water from the paper cup sitting on the side table by his right elbow, checking his watch absentmindedly. It had been an hour and fifteen minutes already, and he had scrolled through all twenty-six of the emails he'd received during that time, read them twice, sending out carefully crafted and proofread responses; he had flicked through the journals of Scientific American lying on the coffee table in front of him a few times, riffling through the glossy pages without seeing, eyes scanning over the Helvetica headlines without comprehending. The kind receptionist sitting behind the desk in the psychiatrist's main office has looked at him multiple times now, her kind concern becoming almost overbearing in its intensity, and Erwin wanted to snap at her, tell her to stop staring, that he was perfectly fine but that the man behind those white wooden doors definitely wasn't. 

He hadn't slept much in the past week, not since the social worker and the adoption agency representative had come by. He and Levi both had been on edge, circling around each other cautiously at the very outer edges of their individual orbits, afraid to get too close for fear of getting burned by the scorching solar flares of fear and desperation that erupted from time to time along their surfaces. 

If the rigid set of his back had been anything to go by, Levi hadn't been getting much sleep these past few nights, either. Erwin had watched him, tense and unmoving from his chosen position on the mattress, as though hoping he might be able to fall into dreams if he just stayed still long enough, or at least pretend that he had. Erwin had wanted to reach out, wanted to run a finger down the ridges of Levi's spine, wanted to press his palm firm against it and rub in soft, warm, concentric circles. But he and Levi were getting quite good at playing charades with each other, and Erwin had been unsure what the new rules of the game were.

Per Dr. Morgan's request, Levi had booked an appointment with a psychiatrist at the UCSF Medical Center. Despite his reassurances to Levi that certainly he wasn't going insane, that of course he was just as mentally stable as the day Erwin had met him all those years ago, his words had sounded false even to his own ears, and they had sown seeds of doubt into the fields of his heart. Perhaps Levi was slightly crazy - no, that was far too insensitive of a word to put it as. Perhaps Levi had just been under rather undue stress lately; Lord knows he'd certainly been tired enough for it. Circles had grown underneath his eyes, ink spilled into a pool of milk, and Erwin was sure he looked no better. 

It reminded him of long nights Levi had spent in preparation for defending his dissertation, a behemoth of a series of a binders that easily weighed a similar amount as a small child. Erwin recalled that Levi hadn't slept much then, either, and Erwin would frequently have to remind him to eat, would sometimes even go so far as to cut up Levi's food for him into easily bite-sized pieces because Levi's hands were too jittery to hold a fork and knife steady, too much coffee and too much stress. He had become a wraith, cheeks hollowed, skin sallow, eyes bloodshot as he rifled through books and scientific articles and the fruits of his own research, which to this day Erwin didn't quite understand. 

* * *

He wondered what sorts of questions the psychiatrist was asking. He was afraid of the answers that Levi might be giving. 

An ad on the softly playing television caught his attention briefly. "If you or a loved one is suffering from depression..." The narrator's soft, calming voice was followed by a string of rapidly spoken numbers that Erwin was not inclined to catch. 

He fiddled with his wedding ring, the titanium smooth beneath his fingertips. He had lost weight, also; the ring was easier to rotate around, and, shaking thoughts of potential depression out of his head, Erwin firmly resolved to stock up on groceries this week. They had been out of milk for at least a week, and neither of them had had anything even remotely resembling a proper meal in what felt like ages. 

Their life had been put on pause, operating slowly through the daily necessities of humanity, and Erwin wondered how much you would have to give up before you stopped being human and became something else. Was there a limit? He sighed, giving the ring a few quick turns about his finger before pressing it down into place again as the white wooden door in front of him opened and deposited Levi into the reception office.

* * *

_ The day of his actual defense, Levi had been so nervous that he'd tripped over his own name, the words spluttering out of his mouth in their sprint to become tangible realities instead of concepts burbling away in someone's mind.  _

_ Erwin had let him go into the auditorium with a kiss and a squeeze of his hand for good luck, and Levi had been so nervous that he'd forgotten to be embarrassed about this normally-taboo public display of affection. Erwin had sat down on a bench with a view of the auditorium's entrance doors, had watched Levi go in, white as a sheet, his back stiff as a board, and had quietly whiled away the hour and a half Levi's defense took with a cup of coffee from the nearby cafe and a set of trade journals his then-boss had requested him to read.  _

* * *

"Well?" Erwin asked, trying to hide the anxiety and nervousness from infecting his voice, unsuccessfully. "Did it go okay?" 

Levi sighed, throwing himself into the plush chair beside Erwin. "It went okay, I guess. He even did the Will Graham test on me, and I apparently passed with flying colors." 

"The Will Graham...?" Erwin trailed off, raising an eyebrow at Levi, who just rolled his eyes at him. 

"You know. Hannibal. Television show about cannibals and empath FBI investigators?" 

"Oh. Right. Of course." Erwin was rather curious about why Levi remembered the plot and events of a television show they hadn't watched in a year and a half when he seemed to have forgotten more important, more pressing, more current matters, such as where he'd left his keys this morning (in his coat pocket, where he'd placed them ten minutes earlier), where they were going (to the psychiatrist's appointment), and why Erwin was taking the day off from work (for the same reason). 

"At any rate," Levi said, placing his hands on his knees and sighing as he stood up, "I'm pretty sure I'm sane, but then again, that's exactly what an insane person would say, isn't it?" He held out a hand to Erwin, who took it and allowed Levi to pull him up. 

* * *

_ When the white wooden doors of the auditorium had opened to eject Levi out into the bright early afternoon sunlight, Erwin hadn't been able to see his expression at first, and he had held his breath, figuring that the slouched posture Levi had adopted since exiting the courtroom could mean nothing good.  _

_ "Well? Did it go okay?" he'd asked when Levi had finally been within earshot, his face turned to the ground. Even then, he had been readying himself to comfort Levi, his brain scrabbling for comforting words and wondering if they had enough money in their budget for him to buy Levi those gigantic ice cream sundaes from Ghirardelli Square that he adored so much.  _

_ Levi had tilted his head back, then, a grin bigger than any Erwin had ever seen plastered over his face.  _

_ "It went better than okay," he had all but shouted, "I did it!"  _

_ They had ended up going out for ice cream anyway, and later that night, after a rather furious liaison in which Levi duly rid himself of all the tension of the past few months, he had slumped boneless against Erwin's chest, gasping heavy and deep, sucking in air as though he had never breathed properly before.  _

_ "I'm happy for you, Levi," Erwin had said earnestly, stroking slightly damp strands of hair away from Levi's forehead.  _

_ "That's Dr. Ackerman to you, now," Levi had replied with a laugh, and Erwin had allowed himself to be pulled up and dragged into their leaky shower with the stuck tap.  _

_ They had been happy, then, quick to love and quick to adore and quick to excite, wearing hearts on silk sleeves as thin as paper. They had been easy to wound, with short careless, thoughtless phrases, and just as easy to apologize, because words had meant everything and nothing. Words wounded, poppies in the water, and just as easily, with a few well applied syllables, words bandaged and healed, and made love simple and clean once again.  _

* * *

Later that evening, long after the dinner dishes had been cleared away and stacked neatly in the dishwasher, they sat side by side in bed, engrossed in their own separate activities, satellites aware of each others' orbits and taking care not to break into them lest they disrupt the gravitational fields nature had so painstakingly laid out for them. The minuscule space between them on the mattress was filled with regrets, and Erwin was terrified to look to see what things he might find, things that he perhaps hadn't been aware that he was disappointed in. 

He busied himself with a novel he'd been trying to get through for the past three weeks, some Stephen King thriller about cell phones or something of the sort, but his eyes kept skipping over the lines and he couldn't make sense of the paragraphs. He was hyperaware of Levi beside him, tapping away on his laptop, going through the same lecture slides, the same diagrams and figures and data, over and over again. Perhaps it was the same way for him, Erwin mused, some sort of nagging worry in the back of Levi's mind that prevented him from concentrating. Perhaps it was normal, just a rough patch in life that comes with making the transition into middle age. 

But suppose it wasn't? he wondered to himself as he watched, out of the corner of his eye, as Levi ran his hands through his hair in frustration, glaring at the slide in front of him as though it had personally offended him. Suppose this wasn't normal, and suppose he was losing Levi, losing his love in fractions so minuscule that he wouldn't notice until the day he woke up to find himself left with half a heart. Levi tapped the 'up' arrow rather violently to examine the previous slide once again, and Erwin slid a hand across the space between them to cover Levi's free hand with his own. 

"Let's go to bed, Lee," he murmured softly, soothingly. "There's no need for you to work so hard anymore; like you said, you've already got tenure." 

"Sure, yeah," Levi muttered darkly as he all but slammed the laptop lid closed. "It's easy for you to say when you haven't been presenting the same material for years now and all of a sudden you can't remember the process or why it's important. For fuck's sake, Eren, maybe I really am insane and this whole thing" - with an angry wave around the darkened bedroom - "is just some fantasy I've cooked up to entertain me while I rock myself to sleep in my straitjacket!" 

It wasn't the tone of the words, it wasn't the manner in which Levi violently threw himself under the covers that had Erwin staying awake for the better part of two additional hours. 

He managed to fall asleep at 2:41 AM, his brain, overwrought with fatigue and the emotional stress of the day, half-convincing him that Levi had just had a slip of the tongue, that Levi had just been tired and irritated.

* * *

_ It had been while they were looking for names for their potential new baby.  _

_ "Erwin," Levi had mused. "Errrrrrwin." He had rolled the name around on his tongue, rolling his r's in a manner indicative of someone who has taken Spanish in high school, trilling the consonant until Erwin finally turned to acknowledge him.  _

_ "Yes?" Erwin had asked, from his position on the other side of the sagging sofa. "Do you need something?"  _

_ "Your name. It means handsome, or some other bullshit like that. I looked it up," Levi had explained nonchalantly, scrolling through a webpage on his old Asus, one that had long ago cracked down the center of the screen and turned the left half of any page a violent neon green color. "Not that we would ever name the baby after you."  _

_ "What, don't you agree with it?" Erwin had asked, pretending offense.  _

_ Levi had looked over, rolled his eyes dramatically at him, and told him that he was getting far too cocky for his own good.  _

* * *

Two weeks later found them sitting tensely on the edges of plush armchairs in Dr. Morgan's office at the UCSF Medical Center once again. It was late October, and Erwin's forty-fourth birthday had come and gone without much fanfare. The morning of, he had woken up, half-expecting Levi to have forgotten, only to have his nose assaulted with the scent of freshly baked cinnamon rolls and strong dark-brewed coffee. 

Though Levi had certainly been much more enthusiastic in previous years, all but hopping up onto the mattress with the tea tray of breakfast items balanced carefully in one hand, Erwin still couldn't help but adore the effort he'd put in, considering the fact that Levi had still been awake the night before when Erwin had finally succumbed to the heavy tug of sleep. Levi had been staying up later and later, going over lectures and reviewing material that he'd already taught, muttering to himself far into the early hours of the morning in an attempt to crystallize the information into his brain. He had been overworking himself, desperate to hide the fact that he wasn't perfect. 

"Happy Birthday," Levi had announced, thrusting a tray laden with cinnamon rolls and two cups of coffee into Erwin's arms. "Happy Birthday, Ere -" He had paused, the tray held in limbo between his extended arms and Erwin's. He'd squinted at Erwin, eyes narrowed, flicking over his facial features. 

"Erwin," he'd corrected, climbing up into bed beside him. "Sorry. I've just been thinking about his complete incompetency in the project I've given him." When Erwin still hadn't responded, Levi had prodded him in the ribs with an elbow. "Aren't you going to eat? You usually love breakfast in bed and getting crumbs all over the sheets." 

"Yeah, thanks, Levi," Erwin had replied, forcing himself to pick up a cinnamon roll and take a bite, scattering the requisite crumbs over the linen. It tasted stale and too sweet in his mouth. Levi hadn't noticed. 

Dr. Morgan bustled in now, tie askew, messy copper colored hair flopping onto his forehead as he sat himself down in the seat across the desk from them. He picked up his glass paperweight, the one that had taken the brunt of Erwin's attentions during their last visit, and nonchalantly tossed it from hand to hand. Erwin wondered what would happen if he were to drop it; would it shatter? And, for that matter, would he care?

"So, Mr. Ackerman, Mr. Smith, how are you this lovely day?" The day in question was anything but lovely; it was typical San Francisco weather, fog clouding out the sky overhead, a wet sort of chill descending over the city, one that had forced Levi to pull his Burberry overcoat out of its space in the closet. The paperweight gave off no rainbow prisms today; grey light gleamed through its center and cast an ethereal stroke of light over the manila folder that Dr. Morgan had in front of him, the one that quite possibly contained their future. Erwin itched to reach out for it, to open it and examine every piece of information inside, but he managed to refrain from leaning over the desk and snatching it up. 

"Could be better," Levi said from beside him, his voice almost disembodied from the depths of the dark coat he was currently huddling in. When Erwin had bought it for him, their tenth Christmas together, he had used Levi's favored coat at the time, a black Brooks Brothers blazer, for accurate measurements, to ensure that it fit perfectly across the waist and shoulders. Levi, who had been convinced that some delinquent had stolen it out of the research laboratory, had threatened to sue the entire department if his coat wasn't returned immediately, and, out of sheer terror of finding himself on the receiving end of such litigation, Erwin had hastily returned the coat to one of the hangers in the more unused section of Levi's half of the closet. The Burberry coat had fit perfectly when Erwin sheepishly presented it to him, and had continued to fit perfectly up until this point in their history together. It now draped itself over Levi, swallowing him up in shadow. "Could be worse, too, I suppose."

Dr. Morgan caught the paperweight in his left hand before setting it down firmly on the table. He spread his hands out on the wood, fingers splayed, as he leaned towards them, clearing his throat. Erwin found himself tensing, holding his breath, preparing for the judgment that was about to be delivered. 

"I have some good news, and some bad news," he informed them, eyes steady as his gaze flicked from Levi to Erwin and back. "I assume you'll be wanting the bad news, first?" 

* * *

He was wood. He was metal. He lifted his hands mechanically to unlock the doors, to put the car into reverse, to drive himself and Levi home. 

He was a machine, coherent thought washed away into a slipstream of facts and statistics and medical jargon that Dr. Morgan had rattled off. 

"Dementia..." "early-onset...." "Alzheimer's..."

"You're joking," Erwin had said, half expecting a camera crew to jump out from behind the door and inform him that it had all been an elaborate hoax to get him to admit to some petty crime he'd committed when he was younger. "Levi's only forty-one." 

Levi had sat quietly beside him, hands folded in his lap, a soft exhale escaping his lungs, one that could have signified relief or despair or perhaps a combination of the two. 

But the minutes had ticked by, no camera crew appeared, and Dr. Morgan had continued to look at them expectantly, the charts and scans and test results laid out before them for their perusal. 

"It's my best conclusion," Dr. Morgan had said, not unkindly, his palms face up in surrender. "Unfortunately, because there is no real diagnostic test for Alzheimer's, the best we can do is try and rule out all other possibilities." 

Erwin had fixated on those words. "So you're not certain?" he had asked, barely able to force the words out past the tightness that had suddenly grown in his chest. "It's just a guess?" 

"It's a well informed one, based on the information we have," Dr. Morgan had said definitively, turning to Erwin as though he had heard the unspoken challenge in his voice. "But, as with many other diseases, it's good that we've caught it early so we can start looking at some options for treatment and how this may affect your lifestyle. I happen to know the chief medical researcher investigating a new set of pharmaceuticals for the disease, and I might be able to get you in on the human trials when it gets to that stage." 

Erwin had tuned him out, unable to hear past the blood rushing in his ears. It wasn't possible, it just couldn't be, he would surely wake up and Levi would be rolling his eyes dramatically beside him and telling him that he'd had another nightmare, again. He had pinched his thigh roughly, angrily, to no avail, and he was sure there was a bruise forming beneath the denim of his jeans now. 

* * *

_ "And Levi? What does that mean?" Erwin had asked, curious.  _

_ "Joined in harmony," Levi had said, as though the answer had been waiting on the tip of his tongue. "It's Hebrew or something, but I'd be willing to bet my dear old dad named me after a pair of his jeans."  _

_ "Joined in harmony, huh?" Erwin had asked, choosing to ignore the quip Levi had made about his father. "Much like we'll be soon."  _

_ Levi had scoffed, but he hadn't been able to stop a grin from dancing around his face as he'd asked Erwin if he meant that in a marital or sexual manner. Erwin had replied, staunchly, that both were applicable, because he loved Levi, doted on him, positively adored him, words gushing with worship until Levi had started to laugh and had kicked him in the ribs for being so sappy.  _

* * *

"Erwin, are you okay?" Levi asked now, stuck in traffic over the Bay Bridge. The sun was starting to set in the horizon, the light racing dark across the clouds. Levi was a shadow among shadows, and Erwin groped blindly in the darkness for his hand. He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all, because that was a question he should have been asking, it was a question that had no correct answer, each yes and no and maybe worse than the last. 

"I could be better," he admitted, once he'd found purchase, Levi's fingers threading through his own. "I could be worse, though, too." 

"I'm sorry." The words came slowly, softly, dredged out of the darkness, and Erwin squeezed Levi's hand tightly in his own. "I'm sorry." 

"Don't apologize," he replied through gritted teeth. "Please, Levi. Please, love. Don't."

Now, though they had grown older and theoretically wiser, they were still easy to wound, their phrases barbed and maligned with double entendres, still easy to hurt and still easy to harm. Words were everything and nothing, and Erwin found that, for the life of him, he couldn't find the syllables to clear out the muddied waters his life had suddenly become. 


	19. Again, Fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a cup like Levi's. Mine includes: "To whom does this ass belong"   
> "I can't even fathom the idea of getting married without first consulting my 27 cats"   
> "Does this look like the face of mercy"

Levi's forty-second birthday arrived on a cold and wet morning, the type of morning that had Erwin wanting to lie lazy in bed beneath a heap of comforters, leaching up the warmth of their tangled limbs. But he forced himself out of bed, bright, early, because it was tradition, because there was a heap of presents that he still had to sign with Levi's name and pile haphazardly on the sofa, and, perhaps, a bit because he could no longer bear to look at Levi, sleeping peaceful and uninhibited beside him without the disease infecting his thoughts. Sweet, beautiful Levi. The very mention of Alzheimer's had clouded Erwin's vision, and though he still loved Levi with abandon, throwing caution to the winds of time, that love had changed. He loved Levi like one would love a beautiful vase, set high up on a mantlepiece far out of the reach for ordinary usage, fragile and prone to cracking. He loved Levi cautiously, carefully, because he was no longer sure what the future would hold for the two of them. 

Erwin's browser history on his laptop and his computer at work had started to fill up with bookmarks and tabs on the disease as he scrolled through page after page of information, searching for a solution that didn't seem to exist. He had read until his eyes had gone blurry, until he'd had to pinch the bridge of his nose to stave off migraines that threatened to assault him before important meetings. He had wanted to know everything that was going to happen, and that everything was far from reassuring. It consumed him, distracted him, terrified him. 

Levi would go slowly, fading in pieces, in parcels, in fractions, so slowly and so gradually that Erwin wouldn't notice it until it was too late. And that was what he was most afraid of. Levi was his, and yet the universe was staking its cosmic claim back on the man he had grown to love and cherish, dragging him back into darkness, and that same universe hadn't seen fit to give Erwin a match. No. Not a match, he needed far more than that now. A torch, a blaze, an inferno might suffice, but Erwin has none of this readily available, has been given nothing so much as a flint or a lighter to see his way by. 

Perhaps he had been foolish. Perhaps he had been too sure of himself, of them. Perhaps he had tempted fate with his good fortune, drawn unnecessary and unwanted attention to their existence in the universe with the sheer damning light of their happiness.

He closed the bedroom door lightly behind him so Levi wouldn't wake up before padding lightly downstairs to make the requisite cup of coffee that Levi would certainly head down in a few minutes for. He deposited a K-cup into the shiny silver Keurig on their kitchen counter, set a cup underneath it, and watched the dark drip into Levi's favorite cup, a white porcelain one that his students had given him a few years ago. It had quotes typed in Courier 12 point font all over it, amusing things that Levi had apparently said in class, and Erwin traced the sentences over the curve of the cup. 

"This piece of chalk is bound to hit an idiot." "Literally I'm just trying to achieve tenure. If you learn something along the way, that's fantastic." "Lord have mercy on me if I ever have one of you as a doctor." 

Erwin smiled wistfully, the kitchen filling with the deep comforting scent of dark roast. Levi had certainly been something, hadn't he? he found himself thinking before he shook his head, cutting off that particular train of thought. 

The universe had a steady grip, but Erwin was determined not to let go quite yet. Levi had been something, was something, would be something, because Erwin would not, could not, dared not define him by a disease, by a word that hadn't had any occasion to stumble into their lives before and certainly was not welcome now. 

There were soft footsteps on the stairs, the creak of the third one from the bottom signaling Levi's arrival, drawn by the smooth aroma of dark coffee. Erwin turned, surprised to find Levi still in the undershirt and boxers he'd worn to bed last night. He was shivering, running his hands up and down his arms, which, even from this distance, Erwin could see had goosebumps. 

"Aren't you cold?" Erwin asked, arching an eyebrow at him. "Why didn't you put on the sweater I left out for you?" He had left one of his old college sweaters out on the armchair in the corner of their room, the ones with holes in the cuffs of the sleeve. It was one that Levi particularly adored, because it was warm and fuzzy on the inside, softened through many loads of laundry, and because it allowed him to cradle steaming cups of tea and coffee in his hands without burning his palms. 

Levi stared at him blankly. "I didn't expect it to be so cold," he admitted finally. "It's only October." 

Erwin stared back at him. No, he thought to himself, surely Levi was still just waking up, still swimming out of the comfort of his dreams. "It's December," he said carefully, wondering where the two months had gone, frolicking away into the recesses of Levi's mind, which had apparently begun to transcend the concepts of days and months and years. "You do know what day it is, don't you?" 

Levi frowned at him, furrowing his eyebrows, his mouth twitching as though struggling to find the right words. 

After a pause that is entirely too long for Erwin's liking, realization dawns across Levi's face. "It's Christmas," he murmured, eyes wide in disbelief. "And I'm forty-two today." 

"Yes, that's right," Erwin replied, trying to ignore the stabbing prick of doubt beneath his rib cage. He took the mug out from the Keurig, handed it to Levi, who accepted it gratefully, warming his hands against the porcelain. "Why don't you go have a seat in the living room and I'll get you a blanket or something?" 

"Okay." Levi nodded in acquiescence. Erwin couldn't help but notice that, in this grey lighting, he cast no shadow on the hardwood floor. 

* * *

 

The first horror movie they had ever watched together was the Japanese edition of The Grudge. Levi hadn't been able to sleep for three days afterwards, and had come out of the entire ordeal looking significantly worse than anyone had expected. Circles had formed deep beneath his eyes from lack of sleep, his skin had gone pale and wan, and Erwin had bruises on his back from where Levi's fingers had dug in, clutching like a lifeline. 

Certainly neither of them believed in ghosts. Erwin was far too much of a skeptic for that, and Levi far too rational. 

"Ghosts are immaterial," Levi had said, more to convince himself than Erwin on one of those sleepless nights. "They have no substance, they have no shadow." 

Erwin had agreed, nodding sleepily because he had already been half-wrapped in dreams at that point. He hadn't realized the merit of Levi's words until today. 

* * *

 

Returning downstairs with a heavy quilt in his arms, Erwin found Levi sitting on the sofa looking at the pile of presents that had become customary. With a wince, Erwin remembered that he hadn't finished addressing them; the blank tags stared back out at him, judgmental, accusing him of not making the time, not making an effort. 

This is happening, they seemed to mock him. This is happening because you didn't love him enough, because you took him for granted, because you do not know what a treasure you have until you begin to lose it. 

Levi reached out for the quilt in his arms, taking it and wrapping it around himself with a sigh of satisfaction, shaking Erwin out of his thoughts. He sat down by Levi on the couch, moving aside a few wrapped packages. Picking up a flat, narrow one, he handed it to Levi, who looked positively delighted. Like every year. 

"I wonder what this is?" he said, a grin on his face as he shredded the paper with a ferocity that was reassuring to watch. It meant Levi hadn't changed, it meant Levi was still there, was still here, was still his. Bits of colorful paper littered the floor as Levi uncovered the novelty tie of the year, a positively horrendous Pacman one that he put on immediately. Erwin had purchased most of the presents earlier in the year, before he'd, before they'd known, and he wondered now, watching Levi unwrap them, if he would have occasion to use them, if he would remember to use them. 

A desk calendar with rip-away days, riddles on the backs, because as Erwin had joked earlier that year, they had to keep their minds sharp, especially since they were entering middle-age and senility was on the horizon. Looking back, that joke had been in particularly bad taste, but he hadn't known, hadn't been aware, and there was something nagging at the back of his mind that told him that he should have paid more attention. How long would it take, he wondered, how long would it take Levi to lose track of his days? How long would it take before he could no longer make sense of the numbers in his research, could no longer balance the checkbooks? How long would it take to lose himself entirely? 

A ten-year pass to the ballet, driven by Levi mentioning wanting to go and see Swan Lake at some point in his life. Ten years was a long time, in retrospect, but no. Erwin shook his head almost violently. Surely the universe would be kind enough to grant him that. 

When he looked up, Levi was staring at him curiously. "Are you okay?" he asked, his hands stilling from their frenzy of paper-shredding. 

"Yeah, just got some paper stuck in my hair," Erwin said, forcing a grin. "Go on. You've still got all these to go." 

Levi set the present he was in the midst of unwrapping on the coffee table by his porcelain mug, turning his full attention to Erwin, studying him with a scrutiny that Erwin felt sure he wasn't worthy of. "I think this one's for you," he said, almost apologetically as he nudged the half-unwrapped present towards Erwin. "Sorry. I got a bit carried away."

Erwin was surprised, sure that Levi was mistaken, and he nudged it back towards Levi's hand. 

"No, I'm sure this one is for you," Levi said, a crease of irritation appearing between his eyebrows. His tone was adamant, insistent, and Erwin acquiesced, picking up the half-unwrapped box and tearing off the rest of the paper. The box he uncovered was small, velvet, and his heart froze for a second, his eyes darting towards Levi's ring finger. He felt an absurd sense of relief wash over him when he found the gold still there. 

Inside was a titanium ring, one much like the one Erwin still wore. He looked at Levi in confusion. 

"You lost weight," Levi explained. "And you never take the damn thing off, so I just got you a new one that's already resized. So you don't have to worry about losing it." 

It was a perfect fit. 

"Thanks, Levi," he said after a moment, tears threatening to cloud his vision. "I love it." 

"You cried last Christmas, too," Levi said with a snort before turning back to the remainder of the pile. "Who would have thought that such a big man cried so easily?"

Erwin dried his eyes on a corner of the blanket Levi had draped around his shoulders, smiling as the frenzy of paper littering the air started up once again. 

Once the living room had been fully covered with scraps of wrapping paper, Levi turned to him. 

"Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas, hugs and kisses," he said after a moment. Erwin smiled, vision threatening to cloud with tears once again at the unspoken implications of Levi's words. 

_ I remember. I remember. I remember.  _

He reached over to take Levi's hand, pressing a kiss to its back.

"Yes," he agreed. "Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas, hugs and kisses to you, too." 

Moments like this, it was far too easy to forget. 


	20. Again, Dream

Levi had never been the best of sleepers, but Erwin couldn't help but notice his increasing restlessness, the way he tossed and turned at night, his body reluctant to surrender itself into Erwin's arms and the dragging grasp of sleep. Erwin wondered, bitterly, how much Alzheimer's would steal away from him, would snatch away from Levi; it had already taken away the years in his life, because the prognosis wasn't exactly comforting information to have, and taken away the life in the years that he did have, memories lost to the sweeping ravages of the disease. 

Never in his wildest fantasies had he been able to imagine a life without Levi, years and time stretching off to the horizon with reckless abandon for their longevity. It hadn't been a factor in even his worst nightmares, because Levi was solid, was stable, a rock and an island fortress of stone, and he had figured Levi would always be there, without pause and without fail. 

The world had suddenly become very, very large, entropy expansion in all conceivable directions, and Erwin was a gnat, a pinprick, an amoeba in the carpet of existence. The color had started to leach out of him, out of him and all the other little pinpricks that made his life his own, and he felt an overwhelming sense of hopelessness holding him down every morning when he woke up with the buzz of his alarm clock. It was weighted heavy, the color of nothing, the tone of emptiness shading it with grey. erwin thought that it was, quite possibly, the color of despair, spreading inky fingers the slimmest of violet blankets, violently blanketing and dampening any hope erwin had once held so much in reserve. 

Erwin watched the rise and fall of Levi's chest, tracing the soft hitches and gentle sighs that burbled out of Levi's lungs. Peaceful, now. Quiet, now. But for how long? he wondered. The digital clock read 11:37 PM, its cherry red digits glaring into Erwin's eyes, mocking him with every second that ticked away, compelling him to remember these moments because now he found them suddenly in short supply. The infinity that he had dreamt of for themselves had shrunk into something finite, something definite, something that had an end. 

The pages rifled quick through Erwin's hands, ink running across the pads of his fingerprints as he ran back through the novel of their lives together, desperate, frantic, to find an answer for the plot twist that had suddenly opened up, yawning and chasmic. 

* * *

_ They had spent lazy, sticky summer evenings lying in bed together, trying to make sure none of their limbs were touching because it was far too hot to even think about those sorts of things without breaking into a sweat. The windows had been cracked wide open, humid evening air spilling in with the mosquitoes and moths. The air conditioner had broken long ago, and the creaky ceiling fan going around in lazy spinning circles only served to stir the hot air around the room.  _

_ Their nights had been filled with Levi beseeching Erwin to please invest in window screens, with Levi handing Erwin rolled up newspapers to defend his honor from the foul beasts of the night, as he'd liked to call them. They had drifted into lazy half-slumber, filled with confessions and open-ended questions that swam liquid into each other's ears and minds and consciences.  _

_ "If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?" Erwin had asked on one such summer night, when Levi was lying spread-eagled over far more than his allotted half of the mattress; Erwin recalled that he had been half hanging over the edge, but Levi had looked far too beautiful to move, limbs splayed in abandon, beads of sweat glistening silky over creamy skin that erwin had littered with strawberry kisses despite Levi's most fervent protests.  _

_ "Antarctica," Levi had responded, promptly, and Erwin had laughed.  _

_ "What about you?" Levi had asked, turning his head towards Erwin. Their words seemed to steam out from between their lips.  _

_ "I'd go anywhere you wanted to," Erwin had said, honestly, truthfully, bravely. Levi had looked thoughtful, too tired, too hot for disdain.  _

_ "even if it was hotter than here?" he had asked, waving a hand around the muggy room. "even if it were a hundred degrees?"  _

_ "I'd follow you to the center of the sun," Erwin had affirmed, and Levi had snorted before rolling over and pressing a kiss to the corner of Erwin's mouth.  _

* * *

Erwin was startled out of his light doze at the shifting of the mattress, the rustling of the covers beside him. Levi rolled over, shaking him out of his dreams of better days. Erwin held his breath as Levi's fingers skittered over his face, tracing his features lightly, unsurely, as though he were the one that was porcelain and he was afraid of touching too roughly. Erwin kept his eyes closed as Levi's fingertips brushed over his eyelids, the swell of his mouth, dancing around the curve of his ear before his hand trailed to Erwin's shoulder and grasped, gently, firmly, shaking. 

"What is it, Levi?" Erwin asked, voice soft. "Are you cold?" Levi's fingers were icy through the fabric of his shirt. 

"Erwin, will you marry me?" Levi asked, quite seriously, eyes gleaming in the darkness. That sentence, those five words, jolted Erwin out of his daze more than the chill of Levi's hand against his skin, more than the way Levi was currently staring at him as though Erwin held all the answers behind his the seal of his lips. 

"What...what's that, Levi?" he asked, refusing to believe. Refusing to accept. 

"Will you marry me?" Levi repeated, his voice raising in pitch, in volume, tinged with desperation. "Please, Erwin, please say yes." As Erwin's eyes became adjusted to the darkness, he found that Levi's shoulders were shaking, faint tremors that Erwin could feel through the mattress. 

"Sweetheart," he said softly, reaching out and tugging Levi close to him, close enough to feel the frantic pulse of Levi's heartbeat against the palm of his hand. "Sweetheart, shh, shh..." His whispers were soothing, a susurrus of comfort, but Levi's trembles refused to abate. 

"You're going to say no," Levi sobbed into the crook of Erwin's neck. "You're going to say no, and then what am I going to do, Erwin? I'm nothing without you." 

* * *

 

_ "How did I ever live without you?" It had been a common refrain when they were newly married, giddy and drunk off the refreshing and exhilarating rush of romance. Erwin had used it quite often, pushing his unbalanced checkbook towards Levi with a pleading expression on his face, and Levi had sighed, good-naturedly, but had pulled the offending figures toward his dinner plate anyway.  _

_ "Yes, you're a mess without me," he had agreed, a smile betraying him as he uncapped a fountain pen and proceeded to smear ink across the sides of his hands. "An absolute wreck. Never in my wildest dreams did I marry such a muddle of a man. It's a good thing dreams aren't real."  _

* * *

 

"Levi, shh, calm down," Erwin said now, the palm of one hand rubbing in firm circles over the planes of Levi's back, stroking away the tremors and the fear. "Love, we're already married, you don't have to worry." 

"Oh, thank God," Levi blubbered. The collar of Erwin's shirt grew damp, and he pressed his nose into Levi's hair, smelling strawberry shampoo and coldness and Levi, closing his eyes tight in a futile attempt to convince himself that this was just a nightmare. "Thank God. I thought I was going to lose you." 

Erwin soothed him with gentle sweet nothings, rubbing away the cold and the traces of Levi's nightmare. The clock glared at him over Levi's shoulder, 1:07 AM, ticking away into 1:30, 2, 2:30. Erwin watched its numbing, relentless progress long after Levi had already faded away into another restless slumber, wondering to what extent Levi meant that. The book fell from his hands, spilling pages from its broken binding, words and paragraphs and chapters fluttering away in the tempest.   



	21. Again, Fall

Levi was a brilliant man, there was no contesting that. But, sometimes, Erwin had to think to himself, ignorance was truly bliss, and though he couldn't speak for Levi, he would certainly have given up his marketing position, given up his technical knowledge, given up everything he'd ever learned if it meant that he could turn back the clock, rewind his memory so that they lived in a world where Levi didn't Alzheimer's, a universe where memory lapses were just natural causes of aging. 

Levi was a brilliant man, brilliant enough to wake up in the morning, spend a few moments of peace as he swam up out of his dreams, before he shuddered, memory of his condition rushing back all too quickly, all too soon. He had started to sleep more during the day, and, to be quite honest, Erwin couldn't blame him. Sleep provided a lovely modicum of surrender, weightless and airy dreams, a fantasy utopia that Erwin wished he could join Levi in. He spent afternoons on the weekends drowsing in bed, on the sofa in front of the TV, and Erwin would spend those same afternoons memorizing the contours of Levi's face, stroking inky hair shot through with quicksilver, praying that, wherever Levi was, he would at least be having good dreams. 

Levi stayed up later at nights, now, frowning at his laptop, at the lecture slides he'd been using for years assembled neatly into their separate PDFs. Despite the occasional quip he would throw in about how he was already tenured, it was painfully evident how hard Levi was working. It was relieving, and simultaneously unnerving, to realize that his love still had his pride intact. Levi was struggling, paddling desperately to keep himself afloat, his lips pressed tight together not to let his secrets out with his air. 

He worked harder than Erwin had seen in a long time, desperately trying to ingrain the information back into a shredded memory, water slipping through a sieve. Circles grew deep and purple beneath his eyes, skin paling sallow, the color leaching out of his cheeks, a ghost in a human shell, a ghost that curled up reluctant in the middle of the day to pillow its head on Erwin's lap and fall asleep to the white noise of the four o'clock news. 

It went in leaps and bounds, and Erwin dreaded the day when Levi would wake up, a bright smile on his face, turn to him, and ask him politely who he was and what he was doing in bed with him. The information brochures Dr. Morgan had given him, as well as the stories of other patients he'd read online, weren't reassuring, and Erwin had come to realize it as reality. Life with Levi had always been a roller coaster, exhilarating passion carving them up, up, up through the clouds of youth before stabilizing into a gentle, mellow, level track.

But, as Erwin knew all too well, what goes up must come down, and they were headed for a plunge. He held onto the sides of the carriage, held onto the guardrails, held tight onto Levi's hand, because he wasn't ready, he wouldn't ever be ready for the eventuality of the drop. Erwin frantically tried to build up structures and blockades to stop them from tipping over the breaking point, fingernails scrabbling raw against matchsticks and every possible opportunity, but life marched on indiscriminate, and it was with a shout of anger that Erwin realized he'd already lost, long ago. 

* * *

 

It was a lazy Saturday afternoon at the beginning of January; the university was on winter holiday, and, per Erwin's gentle requests, Levi had allocated more of his research duties to Ph.D. candidates and graduate students in his lab, who were all too eager to jump at the opportunity to assist on any and every project the reputable Dr. Ackerman needed help with. 

Levi, meanwhile, was engrossed with a project of his own. With Erwin's help, he had dragged out the monster of his dissertation from the dusty space at the back of their hallway cupboard, had plopped the first binder of many onto the kitchen table with a bang, blowing the dust bunnies off the laminated black cover before opening it. 

"I can't forget this," Levi had said, looking almost reminiscent as he drew his finger along the spines of the binders still in the box, drawing his fingertip away grey with the dust of accumulated years. "It made me a doctor." 

It killed Levi, Erwin knew, that he was slowly but steadily forgetting his work, the long hours over cooling coffee and diagrams leaking away into the infinities of time. Erwin had been reluctant, dragging out the box that contained Levi's dissertation, afraid of the rusty memories he would dredge up with the dust and cobwebs, afraid of what other skeletons he would find, afraid of what memories Levi would lose in exchange for this. 

How long? Erwin wondered to himself as he watched Levi over the kitchen table now, squinting at the fine text beneath one of the figures. How long before you forget yourself, how long before you forget your name, your birthday, your blood type? How long before you forget me? 

* * *

 

He remembered that he'd asked that question after a particularly bad fight they'd had one sticky fall evening. He had been twenty-eight, and Levi had been twenty-five, full of sparks, quick to love and quicker to blame. 

God. Erwin struggled to remember. What had that fight been about? It was funny, how the undulating plains of time rendered seemingly grand events of the past unimportant. 

Oh. Right. Erwin remembered now. 

Levi had been spending late nights at the university, sometimes straggling in at three, four in the morning and falling into bed beside Erwin without taking off his clothes, shirt wrinkled, smelling chemical and something else that Erwin hadn't been able to identify. 

"You're seeing someone else." The accusation had been flat, Erwin remembered with a wince now. Levi looked at him across the table, over the tops of his glasses, quirking a curious eyebrow at him. He shook his head, forcing a smile, and Levi shrugged and looked back down at the binder of glossy pages in front of him. 

"I'm not," Levi had protested, but the fire, trapped, had already found an opening, shattering the glass house of Erwin's trust. 

"Go, be with him, then," Erwin had snarled, anger blinding him. "What does it matter? We're young, we'll survive one more heartbreak. I wonder, how long will it take you to forget me? A few days, a few weeks?" 

Levi had been horrified, holding slender hands up in surrender as the inferno burned itself out, leaving Erwin breathless at the force of his own fury. They were young, quick to forgive and to apologize and to take back words whose vitriol faded rapidly in the light of practicality.  

"I couldn't forget you," Levi had whispered, his voice thick with tears. "Who do you think I am?" 

It was a question that Erwin had had two decades and more to answer, but Levi still managed to surprise him sometimes. Like now. 

Levi stood up, closing the binder gently, standing and stretching with a yawn. "I'm going to go to the store," he informed Erwin. "Getting smokes." 

"You're...getting cigarettes?" Erwin asked, confused, as he looked up at Levi, who'd already zipped up his jacket and stuck his keys into his pocket. 

"Yeah, is that so surprising?" Levi asked, as he patted around his pockets for his wallet, which he eventually located in the back right pocket of his jeans. 

"Levi, you don't smoke," Erwin said, standing now, also. "I've known you for over twenty years, and I've never seen you smoke." 

It was Levi's turn to be surprised, to be taken aback. He looked up at Erwin, perplexed. "Are you feeling alright, Erwin?" Erwin let out a silent sigh at this; it was something, grasping at straws, Levi still knew his name. "We've only known each other for a few months. What's all this nonsense about twenty years? And I smoke every once in a while, bad habit from undergrad that I'm trying to kick." 

He gave Erwin another, more confused look, before turning and heading out the door. 

* * *

 

Erwin followed him now, trailing a little bit behind, because he didn't think he could bear to look at Levi right now, couldn't bear to look at the man he'd loved for what felt like forever and see a look of blank, fresh recognition in Levi's eyes. 

Had Levi ever smoked? Erwin wondered to himself as he watched Levi dip into the Walgreens across the street. He shivered and hugged himself, shifting his balance from foot to foot as he waited for the streetlight to change to let him across. Try as he might, Erwin couldn't remember a single time when he'd seen Levi smoking, couldn't remember seeing a single packet of cigarettes around Levi's personal effects, couldn't remember a single kiss where it had tasted like smoke and nicotine. But no, he reminded himself firmly. Alzheimer's couldn't claim both of them with its slippery grasp. 

As he hastily trotted through the crosswalk, Erwin wondered which was a scarier concept. Certainly, there would be some sick sense of romanticism, forgetting together and jumping into the abyss with the same concentric set of ripples. Drowning together. 

But by the same token, there was also a sort of disappointment that came with the knowledge that there was another Levi who had occupied some oxygen in the universe, who had occupied some infinitesimal space that Erwin had not had the opportunity to know. 

He ducked into the Walgreens, eyes flicking around the fluorescent aisles. He walked quickly, aware of how loud his breathing sounded in his mouth, scanning the aisles quickly for Levi. He found him, standing in front of the toothpastes, fiddling with his phone. He watched, breathless, as Levi lifted the phone to his ear, waiting. 

A moment later, his phone vibrated in his pocket, and he ducked into the other aisle to answer. 

"Levi?" he asked. "Are you okay?" 

"Please help me." Levi's voice was barely a whisper, and Erwin sighed, leaning back against the mouthwashes in the aisle he was in. 

"What's wrong, Lee?" he asked, voice soft. "What do you need help with?" 

"I'm lost," Levi murmured. "I must have sleepwalked, or something, because I closed my eyes for a moment and now I'm here, staring at toothpaste. I don't know where here is, though." There was a hint of desperation in his voice. 

"It's okay," Erwin replied, soft, gentle, soothing, as he pushed himself away from the mouthwashes and headed back to the aisle Levi was in. When he rounded the corner, looking past the boxes of floss, he found Levi sitting on the floor, his back to the aisle Erwin had just come from, his head cradled in his arms, the phone pressed limply to his ear, his knees crumpled up to his chest. "I'm here." Other shoppers in the aisle were moving past him, looking at him with mild concern, mild curiosity, and Erwin felt anger spark heated in the core of his heart. Levi wasn't an object to be treated with disdain and curiosity, wasn't deserving of the stares that followed them out of the store as Erwin leaned down, wrapped an arm around Levi's wrist, and tugged him up. 

"How did you get here so fast?" Levi asked him, breathless, as he all but ran to keep up with Erwin's longer strides. "How did you know where I was?"

Anger seethed red behind Erwin's eyes, and he could barely hear Levi's protests. 

"Erwin, you're hurting me!" Levi hissed, jerking his arm out of Erwin's grasp, and, just like that, inferno quelled, Erwin turned apologetic, breathing rough as he turned to Levi, who was massaging his wrist. "What the hell's wrong with you?" Levi snapped at him as he turned on his heel, heading towards home. 

Erwin watched Levi's receding silhouette, quick over the pavement. How long, Levi? he wondered to himself with a sigh as he followed. 

* * *

"I'm sorry," Erwin whispered later that night, pressing a kiss to Levi's wrist where bruises had already started to gather. "I don't know what came over me." 

"I don't know, either," Levi murmured, turning to Erwin in the darkness. "I just..." His voice trailed off into a frustrated sigh. "It's hard, Erwin, losing it all. It's scary, because I remember just enough to wake up every day and say, 'Oh, yes, I have Alzheimer's, that's right.'" There it was. That dreaded word, and Erwin flinched away from it, away from Levi's touch. "Maybe one day I won't remember even that." 

Levi reached out, hand pale in the moonlight, to rest lightly on Erwin's shoulder. Quick to love, quick to forgive, quicker to forget. "How long before I forget you, Erwin?" he asked, voice soft. "It's not something I want to think about, but it..." A sob choked his voice before he cleared his throat, sniffing. "But it might, so please" - voice broken, pieces scattering in the breeze - "please remind me every day." 

"Yes," Erwin whispered, tugging Levi close, tight, enough to hurt, enough to feel. "I swear I will."


	22. Again, Fight

Two seconds. Long enough for a heartbeat, long enough to press snooze on the buttons of the alarm clock, long enough to whisper three words in rapid succession. Two seconds was all Erwin had, was all Erwin could afford, in that sleepy window between dreams and waking, for peace. 

He woke up, greeting the new day with open eyes, gaze traveling for the briefest of instants over Levi's limbs, before his memory - _and oh, how sharp and painful it was_ \- reminded him. Bitterness soured his mouth, spoilt his thoughts with ink, and Levi slept on, forgetting even now, as Erwin lifted a hand to cradle his face, to trace along the smooth swell of his lower lip. 

Levi's brow was uncreased, smooth and calm, no evidence of the fight they'd had the night before. At peace. Erwin envied him his tranquility, tried to squeeze his eyes tight and sink forcibly back into the weightlessness of dreams, but his body wasn't having any of it. He had already remembered, and his dreams were clotted with the makings of a nightmare that blew into a full-fledged storm the moment he opened his eyes to find Levi stirring beside him. 

Levi's eyelashes fluttered, blackbirds across fields of snow, opening pools of charcoal that focused after a moment on Erwin. 

"Good morning," Levi murmured. "Wake up on the wrong side of the bed?"

Erwin was aware his face was fixed in a particularly unappealing scowl, was aware there was no use in forcing a smile he didn't mean into his expression. What was the point anymore? he wondered bitterly to himself. He'd already invested over two decades in the man lying curious beside him, two decades of kisses and laughter and memories, memories swept away in the maelstrom like so many paper kites. What was the point in trying to hide his thoughts, especially now, when he had no guarantee that Levi would remember them past the next minute, past the next hour, past the next week? 

"I don't suppose you remember what we talked about last night," Erwin muttered. He knew it was low, felt ashamed the moment the words were out in the open beside them, crippling guilt sinking its fangs deep into the pit of his belly at the distraught expression that fleet silver swift over Levi's eyes. "Levi, wait," he murmured, already penitent, already trying to make amends, but Levi had already sat up, flung his legs over the side of the bed, marched stiffly to the bathroom without so much as a backwards glance. 

Erwin let his hand drop back to the mattress as the shower started up in the bathroom, the glass door all but banging shut behind Levi. He choked on his words, scrambling in their mad rush to escape the confines of his throat: I'm sorry. I'm scared. I love you more than you know, but he was sure that anything he said would have already been drowned out by the fierce pounding of the shower spray. 

* * *

 

_ Last night had been particularly brutal. Vitriolic and vehement, their words had been tossed out like so many double-edged daggers, wounding, wounded, tinging the air crimson.  _

_ They had gotten back from their lawyer's office, where they'd been discussing Levi's will. It had been Levi's suggestion, much to Erwin's surprise; it was a factor that Erwin hadn't even had the nerve to think about. A will, in Erwin's mind, was for old people, people who had already lived out their lives to the fullest potential, who were ready to toe off their comfortable shoes at the door and step into the next universe. That didn't describe Levi, and Erwin certainly wasn't ready for Levi to leave, because though he had known Levi for almost half of his lifetime, it was too soon, it wasn't enough, Erwin wasn't ready to think about letting go.  _

_ "You know we have to do this, Erwin," Levi had said, three or so weeks ago when they'd been making the appointment. "It's not like I'm suddenly going to miraculously get better." This was exactly what Erwin had been hoping, banking prayers on the trial prescription medication that Dr. Grant Morgan had informed them would be ready for human trials in about six months. "And it's probably a good thing we get this done, anyway. You know. Just in case I get struck down with ovarian cancer."  _

_ It had been a joke, weak, a thinly veiled attempt to bring the conversation back to sea level. Erwin dragged himself, reluctantly, above the water, smiled weakly back at Levi, and agreed that he would accompany him. _

* * *

 

Erwin sighed now, pinching the bridge of his nose in an attempt to stave off the impending migraine that he knew was coming. This wasn't like him, this wasn't like them, to fight so early in the morning. 

It wasn't like them at all. Bitter accusations, snippy remarks, raised voices and furious arguments that had the glitter of tears sparking in Levi's eyes. 

No. Erwin shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts as he stood up and made his tentative way to the bathroom. He had to remedy the situation, had to repent and apologize and ask forgiveness. Had to, now, because if there ever came a time - not too soon, he begged whatever higher beings might be out there - when Levi wouldn't remember what they'd fought about, how they'd hurt each other so bitterly, if that time came, Erwin had to be able to rest assured that he wouldn't have to feel guilty anymore. 

* * *

 

_ Levi's will had been fairly standard, as far as Erwin's limited knowledge of wills and the legal statutes behind them had been. Worldly possessions to Erwin, his half of the house, the amounts in his bank accounts, his jewelry and precious metals. Erwin had nearly had to excuse himself as Levi listed them in a flat, mechanical tone: "chrome Rolex, blue dial, purchased in 2012, pearl cuff links from Harrods, purchased in 2010, golden ring, 24-karat, purchased in..." He'd trailed off, turned to Erwin with a questioning glance. Erwin had barely been able to choke out that the ring in question had been purchased in 2005. The thought that there might come a day when he would hold that ring in his hand again, the thought that there might come a day when Levi might take it off, had Erwin struggling to keep himself from falling apart. _

_ "Won't you be buried in it?" he'd asked, eyes wide, blinking furious to keep the tears from misting at his vision. "Your ring."  _

_ "I was going to give my body to science," Levi had replied. "If they'll have me."  _

_ Erwin had nearly choked at that, at the sheer absurdity of that statement.  _

* * *

 

_Who wouldn't want you?_ he mused to himself now, as he stepped into the bathroom, the tiles already damp beneath his feet from the steam. Levi's back was turned to him, his head under the spray as he vigorously scrubbed away shampoo suds from his hair. He hadn't heard Erwin come in.

_ Who wouldn't want you, perfect as you are?  _

And then, of course, there was the very thought of people cutting into Levi, into his Levi, slicing and dissecting and studying with minute interest the physical minutiae of Levi's body disassembled. 

Though the bathroom was humid with the steam from the shower, Erwin felt a chill run down his spine at the thought of Levi lying pale, cold, irrefutably gone, on a metal operating table. 

* * *

 

_ That hadn't been the only thing they'd argued about, coming home from the lawyer's last night.  _

_ "I want to leave all my worldly belongings and personal effects to my husband, Erwin Smith, and whoever he ends up with." That had been how Levi had phrased it in the attorney's office, verbatim, and they had just barely gotten home before Erwin confronted him about it.  _

_ "What do you mean, whoever I end up with?" he had all but snarled as Levi had been halfway out of his coat. "What the fuck does that mean, Levi? Do you really think so little of me that I'd just run around the instant you're -" He hadn't been able to finish his sentence.  _

_ Levi had sighed, hugging his arms close to his body. Defensive. Protective. They had been playing so long on the same team that it had come as a surprise to Erwin that, suddenly, they were on opposite sides.  _

_ "I don't think that at all -"  _

_ Levi's protests had been drowned out by the staccato drumbeat of Erwin's pulse in his ears.  _

_ "We've been married for longer than some of your students have been alive," he had snarled, bitter vinegar tinging his words sour. "And you think it's going to be easy for me to disregard all of that, all of these years? You think it's going to be easy for me to just pick up my life and move on with it? It's not, Levi!"  _

_ Don't you see? he'd wanted to scream. You are my life. And for you to say something like this, for you to even suggest that I might die with someone else's name on my lips, in someone else's arms, it makes me feel like you don't know me at all.  _

_ Levi had seemed to hear them anyway, out on the open, lying wounded on the kitchen table like so many splintered shards of glass. They had reflected crystal in his eyes, glossy with the words Erwin hadn't said.  _

* * *

 

Erwin tossed his night clothes unceremoniously to the floor, slid open the shower door, and stepped in behind Levi. If the tense set of Levi's back were any indication, the other man was still rather upset with him. 

For good reason, too, Erwin thought to himself as he reached out, tentative, careful, gingerly, to wrap wet arms around Levi's slick body. After a few heart-stopping moments, during which Erwin was more than certain the other man was going to pull away, Levi's rigidity melted away and he slumped into Erwin's embrace. A surrender, a white flag, an admittance that guilt was to be shared. 

Erwin breathed a sigh of relief. 

* * *

 

_ "Is it so much for me to want you to be happy?" Levi had asked, voice choked, glass threading its way through his syllables. "Is it so much to want you to find someone who you can grow old with, who can love you for the rest of your years that I might not be able to share with you?"  _

_ It was the acknowledgment that had Erwin speechless, and Erwin had been terrified at the look in Levi's eyes, hard, crystalline, glinting a challenge, a threat, a promise.  _

_ Levi had curled up on his side of the mattress that night, as far away from Erwin as physically possible, and Erwin hadn't had the strength to reach out and draw him back.  _

* * *

 

"I'm sorry," Erwin whispered now into the crook of Levi's neck, pressing kisses to skin that tasted vaguely like soap and warmth and something distinctly Levi. "I'm sorry." 

"Me, too," Levi breathed, his voice nearly drowned out by the spattering spray. "I thought that if I...signed you away to someone else, it wouldn't hurt quite so much. But I'm selfish." His words were choked now as he turned, pressed his forehead against Erwin's chest. "I want you to be mine forever."

Erwin swallowed, his voice rough in his throat. "I am yours forever," he murmured. "I promised I would be, in front of God and priests and dozens of people." 

"Yeah," Levi said, laughing with tears in his voice. "And I promised I would have a lifetime to make memories with you." 

Erwin sighed, hugging Levi close, bodies wet and slick against each other. "Don't worry," he said, voice soft, tilting his face up into the spray so that he could try to ignore the tears that had started to well in his eyes. "I'll be sure you make good on your promise." 

Levi reached up then, wrapping arms around Erwin's neck, turning his face to the side against Erwin's chest so that Erwin could see his profile, eyelashes blackbirds on snow that had started to turn rosy with heat. Erwin leaned down a bit, kisses flurries in the sodden mess of Levi's hair, tasting salt and shampoo and the acid tinge of desperation. 

Two seconds. A heartbeat, a breath, a whisper of three words in rapid succession as Levi looked up to him. Two seconds, for an "I love you" against lips wet from the spray. Two seconds to forgive, two seconds to let go of his anger, swirling boiling down the drain with the shampoo suds. 


	23. Again, Vow

Erwin measured his days in promises, pleading with whatever higher beings there might be for more time, for more memories, because the ones that they had were slipping rapid through Levi's fingers like clear gossamer waterfalls. He swore he'd never get angry at Levi again, he made oaths that he would be a better citizen, be more politically informed, reduce his dietary intake of red meat, something, anything, that would give him - give them - a bit more time. He was grasping at straws, but unfortunately whatever higher beings there may be thought his offerings pitiful, and so far, none of his entreaties had been answered. 

Sure, Erwin was an open-minded person, but he was starting to lose faith. 

The disease had ripped ravages in both of their lives, more than he knew, and Erwin found himself dozing off at work, fatigued and tired because he'd been spending nights up late with Levi, watching him dedicate his lecture slides to wretched memory as the evening slid away into midnight into the early hours of the morning. If Erwin was being well and truly honest, it was more to assure his own peace of mind than anything else. 

_ "Aren't you tired, Erwin?" Levi had asked him the previous night, or this morning, over a cup of tea, a cup of tea that Erwin probably should have asked him to swap out for warm milk instead, something strictly non-caffeinated, or something sleep-inducing. "You've got work in the morning, you should be asleep." _

_ Erwin had snapped himself out of the doze he'd been falling into, his head resting heavy against his hand. "No, it's okay," he had said, forcing a smile, his head fuzzy with fatigue and the kitchen lights overhead, which had, all of a sudden, seemed too bright, too much. "I just want to keep you company."  _

_ Erwin supposed this was true, as well, but if he was being well and truly honest with himself, he wanted, needed to make sure that Levi wouldn't get up in the middle of the night in some quest for a 24-hour convenience store to satisfy another vice that Erwin hadn't known he'd had. He needed to reassure himself that Levi wouldn't get lost, wandering around the streets of San Francisco in his pajamas and loafers at two in the morning. He needed to prove to himself that Levi would still be there in the morning when he woke up.  _

_"Okay, then," Levi had said, doubtfully, before returning to his laptop and his lecture slides_. 

The late nights had taken their toll on both of them. More often than not these days, Erwin would stop by the university to pick Levi up, only to find him sleeping in his office, his head pillowed on his desk, the computers humming silent from disuse. 

Today was one of those days, at the end of January, a chill still heavy in the air, and Erwin shivered as he took the elevator up to the third floor, footsteps squeaking along the tile floor as he walked towards Levi's lab. He keyed in the code for the door, fingers lingering over the familiar sequence, 50092, and as he pushed the door inwards, he all but slammed into Eren, who had been in the process of backing out of the lab with a cart of chemicals.

"Sorry," Erwin said, apologetically, as he stepped aside to hold the door open for Eren. 

"No worries, Mr..." Eren squinted up at him, deep circles under his eyes that Erwin were sure rivaled his own; the boy's, on the other hand, had probably been caused by something innocuous like late nights studying for midterms or lost sleep over a particularly bad breakup. "Mr. Dr. Ackerman's husband," Eren finished, lamely. 

Erwin held the door open patiently, waiting for Eren to finish backing out, but Eren apparently had no such ideas, and remained firmly wedged in the halfway point between entering and exiting the lab. 

"Is Dr. Ackerman okay?" Eren finally ventured, as Erwin was just starting to wonder if perhaps he was hallucinating, if perhaps he was holding the door open for an imaginary shadow; he certainly wouldn't have put it past himself, not in his current state of sleep deprivation. "Are you okay?" 

"We could be better," Erwin said, wondering how much Levi had admitted. If he'd said anything at all. It would be just like Levi to desperately try to maintain all pretense of normalcy, just like Levi to attempt to salvage all semblances of his pride when everything else was shattering around them. 

Eren looked at him suspiciously, eyebrows furrowing, clearly not believing him, before clearing his throat, shrugging, and tugging the cart of chemicals back out of the lab. Erwin sighed, adjusting the scarf about his neck, heading to Levi's office at the back of the lab. 

Levi Ackerman, Ph.D. He ran his fingertips over the raised letters, the ones that Levi had worked so hard to earn, the ones that had caused him hours of stress and worry, and, in the same turn, hours and years and decades of jubilation and the excitement of discovery. 

He sighed, letting his hand fall back to his side, before reaching out for the handle of Levi's office door and pushing his way in. 

Levi was sleeping, his head pillowed on his desk, his breathing soft, the only sound in the darkness. The office was messier than Erwin had ever seen it in any of his visits, papers piled everywhere, haphazard stacks of files and manila folders scattered on every available surface. Letters, memos, Post-It notes, an avalanche of paper that Erwin felt sure Levi would never have tolerated under normal circumstances. 

But, like it or not, this was their normal now, a new definition added into the dictionary of their lives for the changing times. He looked around the office, eyes tracing over the picture frames holding snapshots, moments of their lives frozen in time, unsure if he was ready to face Levi quite yet.

The original picture of them, at Ghirardelli Square, sharing an ice cream sundae. Laughing. Young. Invincible, sure that the world would never touch them, that statistics and disease and old age wouldn't dare to catch up, burnt away with the fire of their vitality. Erwin smiled, a corner of his mouth tipping up slightly as he picked up the picture frame, blowing off the dust that had gathered on the glass. He rubbed a thumb over the younger Levi's face, a pale oval of joy, cheeks flushed with vigor.

_Perhaps they had been too happy,_ Erwin mused, _and this was the universe's way of saying that they'd taken too many things for granted and relied too much on the certainty of a happy ending._ He set the picture frame back down, nudging it back into its customary place beside one of Levi's computer monitors. 

There was that other picture, too, this one in a wrought silver frame, the two of them dancing at their wedding. This photo didn't have dust on it, the corners of the frame well polished and smooth. Constantly being looked at, Erwin mused to himself as he picked it up to examine it more closely. Tempting fate, their gazes locked so tightly on each other that they hadn't been aware of the obstacles rushing at them headlong until they were already upon them, and Erwin cursed himself for his foolishness. 

_I promise,_ he murmured in a silent vow to the universe, _I will promise you anything you want if you'll give me another chance to make Levi this happy again._

The calendar on Levi's office wall was several days behind, was, in fact, a calendar for last year upon closer inspection. The months that had been completely X'd out were lying in a fluttered pile of pages beneath the calendar, and as Erwin bent down to scoop them up, he found a sheet of printer paper wedged in between the calendar pages, both sides covered dense and dark with Levi's slanting scrawl. He squinted at it. 

"Levi Ackerman, Ph.D." 

"Levi Ackerman, Ph.D."

"Levi Ackerman, Ph.D." 

Going down the page, gaze darting from left to right, Erwin couldn't help but notice that the words at the top of the page were lighter, the pen not pressed quite so heavily against the paper. Questioning? Trying to resist the urge to find the answer on the plaque outside his office door, scribbling words and hoping that they were right? The words grew bolder in the third line, the fourth, deep indents at the bottom of the page, because now Levi was sure of it. Should always have been sure of it, but the universe had a dark sense of humor that renders even the accomplishments of hundreds of moments into dust.

His breath caught in his throat as he turned his head to look at Levi's form, still slumped over his desk, still fast in his dreams. The letters seemed to dance, mocking, laughing at his foolishness, behind his eyes. 

The colors had faded from Levi's office, a slurry blur of greys and blacks, not lightened by the fading glow of the evening. The colors had leached out, coating themselves in dust, and suddenly Erwin couldn't bear it; he reached out, shaking Levi's shoulder, because he needed to reassure himself that Levi wouldn't become dusty himself, wouldn't be forgotten, wouldn't be rendered meaningless by the cruel twists of the universe. 

Levi was his, and surely that had to matter in whatever small way it could. 

Levi stirred beneath his hand, muttering something as he sat up slowly, rubbing at the bridge of his nose where his glasses had dug in, leaving little comma indentations. 

"Oh, hello, Erwin," he said, smiling, full and light and genuine. "I must have dozed off." Erwin didn't point out that this must have been the seventh time he'd heard the same line, but Levi, to his credit, either didn't remember or didn't care that he was starting to sound like a broken record. 

"Yeah, it's been a long day," Erwin agreed as Levi stood up and started to put on his coat. As they headed out the door of the office, Erwin couldn't help but notice that Levi threw a lingering glance to the plaque outside his office door - Levi Ackerman, Ph.D. - his fingertips twitching, as though resisting the urge to run his hands over the physicality of the upraised bronze serifs. Erwin sighed. 

"Yes, you're Levi Ackerman, you've got a Ph.D., you can stop rubbing it in my face now," he said, half joking, but the smile Levi gave him over his shoulder was sunny, brilliant. Young and uninhibited. 

"I know, right? Finally," he said, proudly, unaware of the chill that had hitched itself into Erwin's soul. "Look at you," Levi laughed now, "your hair's gone all gray because you've been worrying about my dissertation with me. That's so sweet of you, but I think you'd better invest in some hair dye. I'm not looking for a sugar daddy look alike yet." 

Levi hummed to himself, a bounce in his step as he headed to the main door of the lab, passing Eren, who was frozen in the hallway, the cart emptied of its load of labeled glass bottles. Erwin grimaced as he met the boy's eyes; he had clearly heard every word. He shook his head, slowly, at Eren, a warning for silence. His turquoise eyes were the only steady color in the room; the other hues had been leached out, colors fading rapid behind Levi's footsteps. 

Nothing was as clear as it should have been, and Erwin begged the universe, pleaded with whatever higher beings were deigning to listen to him, for a few moments of clarity as he hurried to catch up with Levi, who was already waiting at the elevator, the button lit up to head down.

_Perhaps I'm asking too much,_ Erwin thought to himself as the elevator carriage glided down smoothly, the cool, clinical female voice informing him they were going down, passing the second floor, now arriving at the lobby. _Perhaps I need to revise my statement._

_Give me more time with Levi. Surely that couldn't have been too much to ask,_ Erwin thought to himself as he led Levi across the parking lot to his Toyota. From what he'd read online and in the pamphlets Dr. Morgan had given them, Alzheimer's wasn't an immediate death sentence, people could live for years and years with it. 

The universe, when it does listen in to our pitiful demands, deals in spades, extravagance spiraling out boundless, long after the point where we can't bear its overwhelming generosity a single moment longer. As Erwin bundled Levi into the car that chilly January evening, he didn't know yet that the universe had just promised him lifetimes, infinities, with Levi, again and again and again.


	24. Again, Think

E ren was the chink in the armor, the crack in the dam, the water spilling out quick and furious now because Erwin couldn't deny the fact that now somebody else knew, for certain, somebody else knew that something wasn't quite right. Erwin had no doubt that Eren would be able to figure it out, it didn't take much to put two and two together surely, and Erwin winged a silent prayer to the heavens that the boy would at least exercise some discretion. Levi had no recollection of it, and Erwin was, to some extent, grateful for it. It would have been devastating, a shattering blow to his dignity, and, for the present moment, Erwin was occupied, desperately trying to juggle the burdens Levi had unwittingly saddled him with. 

And Erwin had thought he was doing rather a good job of managing it, taking on additional notches in his time table that Levi would normally have been reminding him of. 

Pick up dry cleaning. 

Pay the utility bills.

Interview the new temps, so remember to wear that slate blue dress shirt because it makes you look like an authority figure. This, verbatim. 

He had thought he was doing an excellent job, but apparently the universe thought otherwise. 

The dry cleaning laid forgotten for a week and a half, because it was one of the farthest things from their minds, and Erwin only noticed once he rummaged through his closet one Thursday morning in early March and found that he was completely out of clean dress shirts. Levi had, for the past three days or so, been wearing a navy and silver sweater vest with a generic white polo underneath. 

_ "You're wearing that, again?" Erwin had asked Levi yesterday. Levi had looked at him, confused.  _

_ "This is the first time I've worn it this week."  _

Erwin had decided not to argue the small points, had sighed below his breath, and with a resigned shrug had held open the door of the Toyota open for Levi fifteen minutes later, breaths puffing like smoke from their mouths. He had gotten used to Levi's little quirks - circling all the capital Ls in the newspaper with a black ballpoint pen before handing it over to Erwin, walking a circuit through the house before going to bed, as if to familiarize himself with surroundings he'd been in for the past two decades and some of his life - and certainly he could absorb this, too. In fact, he'd gotten used to watching Levi's blue-and-silver back receding between the brick buildings of the university. 

It had been this way for two months, now, teetering on the bridge of uncertainty, rope tethers fraying beneath their hands and somehow holding with every step they took forward. Erwin privately thought to himself that he could, that they could, survive something like this, years and years of these eccentricities if needed. He'd stopped pleading for normalcy, because that hope had long ago dissipated into the realms of fiction and fantasy, but he supposed this - whatever this was - was becoming their new normal. He could handle it, could handle whatever small stabbing shards of pain Levi occasionally, inadvertently threw out, collateral damage of the glass house of his mind shattering down around them. 

Like last night. 

_ "I love you," Levi had said, out of the blue, unprompted. It had been unexpected. Levi usually never said it first, keeping his emotions locked tight to his heart, his actions speaking volumes more than his words. Erwin had looked up from his steak, surprised, half dreading what sort of look he'd find in Levi's eyes, half fearful of what Levi would say next. Would this be it? he had wondered, his fingers clamping down around the silver handles of the cutlery. Would this be the moment when Levi would look at him across the table with resignation, slip off his ring, and slide it clattering gold across the wood in some sort of noble gesture about freeing them both of burdens?  _

_ But no. When Erwin had looked up from his steak, he had been beyond relieved to find Levi's eyes bright, alert, aware, no flecks of silver to mar the obsidian with doubt, his hands far apart from each other, the golden ring still claiming its place on Levi's ring finger. It was a look that Erwin had come to recognize and savor and cherish, a look that was his Levi's and his Levi's alone, a look that meant that he was talking to the forty-two year old version of his husband, not the thirty-three, twenty-five, or, in one case, sixteen-year-old iteration.  _

_ "Fuck off, the police force has better things to be doing than going around locking up kids out past curfew," Levi had spat at him two weeks ago when Erwin had reached out over the mahogany of the dinner table to pat his hand reassuringly. He had drawn back, amazed, aghast, and Levi had glowered at him from over the black frames of his glasses, a wounded hostility that Erwin had never seen before.  _

_ Levi was diamond, crystal clear and multifaceted, and he was coal, obscure and hiding beneath rough edges of versions of himself that Erwin had never met before, versions of Levi that Erwin had never met and was now getting to know in painstaking detail.  _

_ But that had been two weeks ago, and this had been last night. Erwin had laid his fork down on the side of his plate, listening patiently to what forty-two-year-old Levi had to say.  _

_ "I love you," Levi had repeated slowly, as though it were possible Erwin might not have heard him the first time. Erwin hadn't been able to stop his smile.  _

_ "I love you, too," he'd replied, grinning, because moments like this were few and far between and he'd have to make sure he committed every instance, every imperfection of this memory to heart. "And you've got spinach stuck in your teeth." _

_Levi had closed his mouth, pursed his lips, trying to remove the offending shred of vegetable with his tongu_ e. After a small pause, he'd sighed. The spinach had still been _there_. 

_March 4th,_ Erwin remembered reciting to himself. _Levi, really Levi, tells me he loves me. He's got spinach stuck between his two front teeth, he's wearing that navy and silver sweater vest with a white polo, the same outfit he wore yesterday._

_ "I've got to say it a lot now, because one day...I think I'll forget how to."  _

_ He hadn't been able to meet Erwin's eyes, his gaze skittering off somewhere to the side, and Erwin had felt his mouth going dry. It had been this quiet acceptance that had Erwin's fingernails cutting scarlet crescents into his palms.  _

He has circles under his eyes, beneath his eyeglasses, because he - we - aren't getting enough sleep. His hair is shot through with silver, night sky in a meteor shower. 

_ He had tried to laugh, shrug it off. Surely Levi couldn't possibly mean that. But Levi had looked at him, then, eyes steady, clear, serious.  _

_ "I loved you long before I knew the meaning of love. And when, yes, don't look at me like that!" - because Erwin was sure he'd been grimacing, shards of glass scraping away at his heartstrings - "when I forget what it means, it doesn't mean that I don't love you. I always will, even if one day I" - Levi's breath had hitched here, if Erwin's memory served correctly, choking on a sob - "even if one day I forget how to string those words together, even if one day I forget your name or who you are. I need you to know" - Levi had started crying here, truly and earnestly, hushed and choking - "I need you to know that I love you, I love you, I love you."  _

He is beautiful beyond measure, and he is mine, wholly and utterly, in this single moment. 

The power company had sent back a snarky letter informing him that they were past due on their water and electric, and Erwin had hidden the "Late" bill from Levi, hiding away the glaring red letters stamped across the front of the envelope as he'd dashed off a check with the tardy fee included and stuffed it into the mailbox. 

_I promise,_ he'd whispered as he'd watched the slip of paper falling through the deep blue slot of the post box, _I promise I will never miss another deadline if we can just continue on like this. I promise I will never again question Levi if he wants to wear the same outfit five days, five weeks, five months in a row, if you'll just let me have this._

Erwin thought, mistakenly, that stasis was a good thing, that he'd learn to absorb it and accept it. _No news was good news,_ he reasoned to himself as he pulled open the glass door of the conference room at Sina Technologies now in preparation to interview the new applicants for their marketing intern position. _Silence was golden_. Surely there were plenty of idioms encompassed in the English language extolling the virtues of the quiet. 

He had, miracle of miracles, remembered to wear his slate blue dress shirt today, but it was wrinkled from spending too many long weeks pressed in his closet between his other clothes, and he had already long ago given up trying to smooth out the creases. 

"Hello," he said, smiling at the young woman already sitting, hands folded in the lap of her pencil skirt, posture straight and perfect, calm coolness written all over her dark eyes. "You must be Ms. Ackerman." 

"Yes, please call me Mikasa," she said, smiling demurely at him as he sat down across from her. Obsidian eyes, crystal clarity, and Erwin had to push away the thought that perhaps she and Levi were related. Levi had never mentioned relatives, and surely Ackerman was a common enough surname. 

But the universe must have seen fit to test him, to show him that there was no way Erwin Smith, nor any other man, could struggle afloat over the lead weights strapped to his ankles. Through the interview, Erwin couldn't help but notice how her eyes sparkled with a quiet, barely restrained excitement as she talked about the marketing projects she'd done in university, what she hoped to get out of her time working at Sina Technologies, and what her tentative goals for the future were. She dreamed big, her smile vivacious and brilliant as she laid out her plans. 

Erwin's stomach sank with every word. 

Mikasa Ackerman was the perfect candidate, but when Erwin stood up, reaching a hand out across the table with a forced smile and a promise to call her back regarding their final decision, he knew that, without a doubt, he wouldn't be able to give her the job. 

Too much like Levi, too much like the twenty-four-year-old Erwin had spilt coffee over, had taken out to dinner, had laughed and drank and made memories with. It was altogether all too much, and as he watched Levi's navy and silver form making its steady way to the Toyota after work that day, Erwin tried to make peace with the universe; his earlier entreaties had made the universe throw Mikasa's application in the pool, his earlier pleas had evidently only served to dial in a veritable reincarnation of the Levi he'd fallen in love with. 

Levi opened the car door, slipping into the leather seat with a cheerful, "Good evening, Erwin, how was your day?" In the gloom of the early evening, Erwin couldn't make out the expression in Levi's eyes. He didn't have to see it to know Levi's gaze was skittering around, didn't have to know Levi's eyes weren't crystal clarity obsidian, when Levi spoke again, telling him about the meeting he'd had with his advisor about his dissertation. 

Well, Erwin thought to himself as he forced his fingers to relax from their cramped clench on the steering wheel, he would settle for a universe where Levi knew his name, where Levi knew they loved each other. Yes, he'd settle for it, if this was the bare minimum the universe was willing to give him. He'd deal, somehow, but Erwin was sinking, rapid, water filling his lungs and shoving him under relentless, the surface stilling, calm, over features wavering out of focus. Levi flickered in and out, sixteen, twenty-five, forty-two, and Erwin woke up in the mornings praying he'd exist in the universe Levi woke up in. 

For now, that was enough. 


	25. Again, Admit

The man on the answering machine wasn't someone whose voice Erwin had heard before, and for half a second, he was almost terrified, almost angry, when he played it back and the man asked for Levi. That terror and anger faded away a moment later, when the man introduced himself as the provost of the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. It was silly, he thought, looking over to Levi, who was putting away groceries - Erwin would have to go and redo it later, lest the milk go rancid in the cupboard and the bread go hard from extended hours in the fridge. But there was always that constant worry nagging at the back of his head where Levi was concerned, worries never voiced but always present. 

_ Will you still know me when you wake up? _

_ What if tonight is the last night you say my name? _

_ Will you still remember that you love me tomorrow?  _

* * *

 

He had woken up late three nights ago, the mattress hollow beside him, sheets cold and relaxed around the vague imprint of Levi's body. He had patted the linen absentmindedly, still trying to wake up and shake off the vestiges of sleep. What had woken him at - he'd rolled over, squinting at the digital clock on the nightstand, cherry numbers harsh on his eyes - 2:11 AM? 

A door banged downstairs, and Erwin sat up, fatigue gone, panicking as the entirety of the situation hit him. Levi was gone, for God knows how long, he'd probably woken up and gone out to buy cigarettes or something else that Erwin had never seen him use. Pajamas in the cold March night, wandering around lost, and Erwin desperately tried to swallow down the rising fear, chilly and metallic in the back of his mouth even as he tried to battle away all the different scenarios that might have happened, might be happening. 

Levi was his past, his present, his future, and suddenly all three versions seemed unstable. A maelstrom, and Erwin had only an umbrella against the deluge. Soaked through. 

He hopped into a pair of jeans, wincing as the chilled denim scraped against his legs, barely managing to stuff his keys, wallet, and mobile into his pockets before barreling down the stairs. A single light was on in the kitchen, casting shadows over the table from Levi's sleeping laptop and a half-full cup of tea. The porcelain was cool to the touch, and Erwin took deep breaths through his nose, trying to fend off an oncoming panic attack. Who knew how long Levi had been gone, where he was going, what he was doing? 

The screen door leading to the porch was swinging back and forth lazily on creaking hinges that Erwin always swore he would get around to oiling, putting it off and off and off, much to Levi's ever-increasing consternation. They screamed as Erwin threw it open, shoving his feet into a pair of shoes, running out into the dark. 

Hit by a car. Dying of pneumonia in some ditch somewhere. The prospects were terrifying, but one in particular hit Erwin harder than the rest. 

What if Levi had gotten up and left? Had consciously decided that perhaps this wasn't the life he wanted, that Erwin wasn't the husband he wanted?

_ Will you still love me?  _

God. Erwin had had to bite down rough on the inside of his cheek to clear away the cobwebs of doubt that had started to encroach themselves upon his vision. The sharp twinge of copper against his tongue, and the sobering chill of the late March air in his lungs, had worked, and Erwin staggered off the porch into the darkness of the backyard, the grass of their lawn brushing against his ankles, far too long because that chore had been put off along with the hinges. everything had been put on the back burners since Levi. 

* * *

 

"If you wouldn't mind giving me a ring back at your earliest convenience, Dr. Ackerman," the provost finished. Levi looked at him over the counter, his hands nervously fiddling with the handles of the paper sack their grocery had come in. Twist, twist, turn. Erwin's eyes were drawn to the motion. 

Twist. 

Twist.

Turn. 

"I'll give him a call tomorrow," Levi said, his voice unnaturally quiet, muted, his head hanging, like a child in trouble. 

"You said that five yesterdays ago," Erwin said, his voice equally as quiet, and Levi looked up, grey on blue makes slate. 

"Message received on March 7th, 10:08 A.M." The cool, clinical voice of the answering machine informed them as the provost's message began playing again. "Today's date is March 12th."

Twist, twist, turn.

* * *

 

Erwin had been so caught up in thoughts of Levi, Levi missing, Levi leaving, that he didn't notice Levi lying down in the yard until he all but tripped over him. 

"Ouch," Levi had said, but it had been good natured as he rolled over onto his side to smile at Erwin, who had landed rather hard on his knee; the joint would never be quite the same. 

"Levi." Erwin's voice had been half-relieved, half-confused. "Levi." The repetition had held more anger, a demand to know why he was out there at two in the morning. "What the hell are you doing?" This question had been tired, defeated, as Erwin spread out on the grass beside him, the wound up tension in his limbs dissipating with every slowing heartbeat. 

"Stars," Levi had said simply, his hand pale as it reached up to trace patterns overhead, connecting the twinkling white dots of stars in the velvet blue of the night sky. "It's amazing, isn't it?" 

Erwin had looked. Really looked. It was breathtaking, the spread of the universe surrounding them, everywhere and nowhere all at once, reminding him of how small he was, insignificant, their story but a mere breath in the grand saga of time. 

* * *

 

"I forgot," Levi admitted now. Erwin had to fight to keep a harsh laugh from spilling out. He bit the inside of his cheek, copper. 

"I know," he settled on, finally. Unsatisfying. They had played out this conversation four times already, and he had tried out different replies, all of which, much to his disgust, had been as unsatisfactory as this one. It was like some sick, twisted version of Groundhog Day, timeless, time grains of sand blowing away in the tempest of Erwin's devastation, tossing themselves into his eyes and blinding him. 

He had asked for a do-over, and was receiving them in spades. Too much, too much, too much, because when he'd bargained with the universe, he had been too greedy and too underestimating of the power of his adversary. 

"I'll help you call him tomorrow," he murmured, hedging his bets. Levi looked at him. Gratitude. It took Erwin's breath away. It wasn't an emotion he'd seen play out across either of their features in quite a while.

"Yes, that would be nice," Levi said finally, his hands wringing the paper handles into knots at the admission of neediness. 

Twist, twist, turn. 

* * *

 

"Orion, the Big Dipper, Little Dipper..." Levi had traced out the constellations, murmuring their names to Erwin, who had dutifully followed the trajectory of his finger through the night. 

Erwin had turned to look at him, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Libra. The darkness of the night washed out the traces of Levi's age, rendering his features smooth and beautiful in the dim light, and Erwin had slipped his hand into Levi's. Pretending that nothing was wrong, pretending that they were still the people they had been when they'd gotten married, young and hopeful, laughter quick to rise to their mouths. 

"Oh!" Levi had gasped, eyes widening. Erwin's gaze had shot up to the velvet of the sky, a white blue streak cutting light through the darkness. "Make a wish, Erwin." 

A wish? Erwin had more of those than he knew what to do with. 

_ I want Levi to get better, he thought. Pegasus. Virgo. Aquarius. I will give you everything if you only grant me this.  _

"I've never gotten to see the Perseids like this," Levi had commented, as another shooting star stroked across the sky. "School always starts in August right around the time the meteor shower does."

_Oh. Right. That clearly wouldn't happen,_ Erwin had thought, his hopes dashed.

Sagittarius. Draco. Lyra. 

Alzheimer's was a death sentence, and Erwin counted every second ticking away into the vast hourglass of time, bargaining for more grains of sand. How many years did they have left? Six? Seven? How many months, how many years would they have when Levi could still walk, could still go to the bathroom by himself? 

_ Not enough, not enough, not enough.  _

"We're made from stardust, you know," Levi had said, his hand falling back to earth to rest on his stomach. "Atoms on atoms on molecules. It's amazing stuff, but I don't think I could ever wrap my mind around it." 

Erwin had been silent, unsure how to respond. Levi had squeezed his hand, the gold of his ring pressing into erwin's fingers. 

"We're part of the same star, I'm sure," Levi had continued. He hadn't offered an explanation, and Erwin hadn't asked for one. 

* * *

 

Twist. Twist. Turn.

"They attract," Levi blurted out now as Erwin was pouring soup into a pot to heat up. He could still hear the rustling and crinkling of the paper handles. 

"What attracts, Levi?" he asked, tiredly. 

"Atoms. Molecules. A star explodes and sends dust across the universe and, at heart, it wants to fuse back together into what it was before." Levi looked almost excited now, twist, twist, turn. 

Erwin turned back abruptly - _we're part of the same star, I'm sure_ \- and closed his eyes, breathing in the comforting, deep scent of Thai chicken curry soup as he tried not to cry. 

Time jolted back and forth, getting stuck in ruts like a broken record, gravity and grains of sand meaningless. Erwin shattered the hourglass, sharp shards cutting gashes across his fingers, and he bled the universe, flakes of stardust, atoms and molecules pouring out to meet Levi, who smiled heartbreakingly sweetly at him as he pushed a bowl of soup across the dinner table to him.  


	26. "We're Part of the Same Star, I'm Sure"

Fanart used with permission from [by-levi on Tumblr](http://www.by-levi.tumblr.com). Go check them out~   
Do not redistribute, reuse, repost without their permission, please! 


	27. Again, Hope

Despite having been in and out of the UCSF Medical Center for months now, Dr. Grant Morgan's glass-walled office hadn't changed a bit. The same photographs occupied the same spots on his mahogany desk, their silver and wood frames smudged with fingerprints, signs of well-loved memories. Erwin's eyes traveled over the clear glass restlessly, his leg jiggling as Levi's thumb traced a slow trajectory over the back of his hand from where their fingers were intertwined in the infinitesimal space between their two chairs. 

The photograph that the neurologist had by his computer monitor was one of him and a pretty young woman that Erwin pegged to be a girlfriend or a very close friend of his, although the former was more likely based on the way they were posed in the photograph. Dr. Morgan's arm was looped around her waist, comfort evident in the way his hand rested slightly on her hip, and they were smiling up at the photographer, a bridge of sun-kissed freckles dancing from the bridge of his nose to hers in perfect complementary constellations. From the looks of it, they were sitting at one of the black wrought iron tables in Ghirardelli Square, the remnants of a sundae milky in its tall glass on the table behind them. 

* * *

 

The call to the provost hadn't been easy, despite the fact that Levi had been relatively coherent for most of it. Erwin despaired at the thought, that he'd have to start measuring things in relativity, that he'd have to start measuring the goodness of their days, of their months, of the years that he and Levi had left together by how little or how much Levi had forgotten. 

He remembered thinking, as the phone on speaker rang between them on the coffee table, that this wasn't how normal relationships were supposed to go. He and Levi were supposed to go old together, were supposed to adopt a child, were supposed to be fathers and parents and lovers for years upon years. But the definition of normalcy was constantly changing, and just this week alone Erwin had been a stranger, had been a fiancee, had been a husband. The different reincarnations of himself spun around, pinwheeling, whirling around in the tempest, until Erwin found himself looking into the glass of their bathroom mirror and not recognizing the man that stared back out at him. 

His hair was shot through with silver, grey threatening to overtake the blonde, and shadows like storms gathered beneath the tired oceans of his bloodshot eyes. His forehead and mouth were bracketed with pronounced wrinkles, worry lines, and he'd wanted to reach into the glass, to reach out to his reflection and angrily demand where his youth had gone. 

* * *

 

Erwin sighed, barely audible, but Levi turned to him anyway, hand squeezing softly, curiously. His eyes meandered over to where Erwin's gaze was, heavy on the picture in the frame. Levi adjusted his glasses, pushing them farther up the bridge of his nose, squinting at the photo. 

"That's Ghirardelli Square," he said suddenly, with a hint of recognition, and Erwin's heart leapt. He remembered, he remembered, a beacon of hope in the midst of the deepest part of the night. "I've always wanted to go there."

Erwin's heart clenched, and he berated himself for even allowing this tiny modicum of hope to sneak its treacherous way in. 

* * *

 

The provost's tone had been fraught with understanding over the iPhone's speakers, and Erwin wanted to be angry, wanted to shout that he couldn't possibly understand. He had wanted to feel something, anything, but the mind numbing fatigue and ennui that had cast grey shadows over his soul, sprouts of inky tendrils planted ever since Levi's diagnosis fading away into uniform shades of monochrome, staining everything with despair. 

Levi had clung to his hand, then, tears pooling in his eyes, stubbornly refusing to fall as the provost continued to talk, his tones tinny and staticky over the speaker phone. Some students, in his lectures and in his lab, had started to become concerned about him, the provost explained, his tone level. Perhaps a sabbatical would work wonders for Dr. Ackerman, the provost concluded, but there had been no question of doubt about it. 

Levi had barely been able to choke out a "Thank you" and a "Goodbye" before he'd collapsed into tears. 

He had picked up a pillow, had buried his face in it, suede and down muffling screams and sobs that Erwin no longer had left in him. The anger and the fear and the despair were astounding, and he had watched, two steps removed, watching his hand - stranger fiancee husband - moving in soothing circles over the heaving planes of Levi's back. 

Levi hadn't taken his glasses off, and they'd left swollen indentations where they'd pressed in at the bridge of his nose. 

* * *

 

"We've been there before, Levi," Erwin said, halfheartedly thinking of the photographs in Levi's office at the university, the office that they would have to get around to packing up at some point for a new biochemistry professor and researcher to move in. He supposed he could try to replicate the office in the guest room, but was unsure if the gesture would be soothing or even more perplexing to Levi, who was already stumbling through their house in search of rooms whose locations he'd forgotten. "We've been there plenty of times." 

Levi frowned, closing his eyes in thought. One second passed, two, three, Erwin's heartbeats ticking away time that slid from the gaps in his fingers like so many fine grains of sand, slipping away in the tide. 

"I don't recall," Levi said finally, opening his eyes and looking at him, apologetically. "Sorry." 

"It's okay," Erwin murmured, squeezing his hand automatically. "We'll go there sometime." 

Levi nodded, his eyebrows furrowed in thought, trying to dredge up memories through the sieve of his mind. 

"extra whipped cream," Levi mumbled, staring very hard at the photograph. Erwin quelled the seedling of hope that had started up again, with a stern look and a shake of his head. This, too, would pass, or so he prayed. 

"That's right," he agreed, his thumb tracing a trajectory over the back of Levi's hand as the other man leaned forward to examine the picture closer. "Lots of whipped cream and fudge. You like it that way." 

"That can't be good for my blood pressure," Levi muttered, sitting back, and Erwin had to stifle back a laugh that almost as quickly turned into a choked off groan. Levi wouldn't grow old enough to stress over his blood pressure or his cholesterol; if he hit fifty, Erwin would consider himself beyond blessed. 

The idea of an eternity without Levi had Erwin's breath hitching in his throat, and he once again began to think of those news stories about couples who had died within a few months of each other, following each other into the next lifetime, collapsing back into the same stars and weaving back together. Inseparable. 

A beam of sunlight shot through the glass prism paperweight Dr. Morgan kept on his desk, coloring Levi's cheek with shades of the rainbow. This was, at least, one thing that Erwin could safely hope for, he thought to himself as the office door opened to reveal Dr. Morgan, as disheveled as ever. 

He had no doubt he'd be able to find Levi in the next life. 

* * *

 

If there was one thing that Erwin was grateful to the disease for, he was irritatingly grateful that Levi forgot about the call with the provost within a few days. 

Erwin had taken Levi to work with him, where he'd installed him in a corner of his office with a glass of water and the thick binders of his dissertation, but he knew that this, too, could not last. 

He'd already talked with the president of the marketing division, already bitten back his pride and admitted that he'd need to start working from home more. The president had been sympathetic, eyes wandering over to watch Levi scribbling nonsense notes all over his dissertation through the glass walls of Erwin's office.

When Erwin had taken a glance at the Post-its covering the laminated pages of Levi's thick dissertation on the genetics of addiction, he found a mess of doodles and scrawls rampaging in squares of pink and yellow and aqua across the fine printed text underneath. 

"Levi Ackerman, Ph.D." was written on a fair amount of them.

"Levi Smith," doodled in loopy scrawl, hearts dotting over the i's like a particularly infatuated teenage girl. It had hurt Erwin's heart to look at them, and so he'd tucked them away. Levi had never expressed a particular sentiment to change his surname, and Erwin had never pressed the issue, always thinking that there would be more time, more time, more time. 

But time was running out, grains of sand disappearing down the rabbit hole with an astonishing rapidity, and Erwin began to work from home more and more, keeping Levi company with what little time they had left. 

Time was a chrysalis, and when Levi got up early to go to work, forgetting, Erwin would discourage him, dragging him back to bed with soft kisses and murmurs that it was spring holiday, winter break, summer session. Seasons, seconds lost meaning, and all Erwin knew was that he didn't have enough of them.

* * *

 

Dr. Morgan had Levi's file in hand, and he sat down in front of them, looking particularly ecstatic as he spread the charts out on the mahogany between them. 

"Good news," he blustered, without any ado. "I've gotten you approved for the pharmaceutical trials." 

Levi looked at him blankly, a polite smile fixed on his face, and Erwin desperately tried to squash the seedlings of anticipation sprouting needy tendrils around the core of his soul. It'll amount to nothing, he told himself firmly. Nothing will change.

And yet, listening to Dr. Morgan's detailing of the medication, how it worked, potential side effects, Erwin thought that, perhaps, just perhaps, he could allow himself to hope. 


	28. Again, Fail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hypothetical medicine in this story is based off of Aricept, a prescription medication used to treat mild-moderate dementia in patients with Alzheimer's.

 

Dr. Morgan had told them it would take some time for the medicine to have any noticeable effect, if it worked at all, and had sent them off with a prescription, directions to the local pharmacy, and a comforting pat on Erwin's shoulder. Have faith, Erwin thought Dr. Morgan had been saying at the time, but now, five weeks later, he privately revised that statement. In hindsight, which was, of course, irritatingly accurate, Erwin supposed that the neurologist had been warning him not to hope for too much, not to bank all of his expectations on the chalky yellow rounds he shook out faithfully every Sunday into Levi's plastic pillbox. One in the morning, after breakfast, one before bed, swallowed down with big glasses of water and a wince at the taste. 

"What are these?" Levi asked, sitting at the breakfast table, already halfway through a plate of pancakes. Erwin turned to look; Levi was prodding the yellow pill on his napkin with the handle of his fork, suspicious. 

He picked his battles carefully these days; he chose to ignore the fact that Levi currently had smeared syrup all over the table and the front of his shirt, chose to ignore the fact that Levi had woken up that morning determined to have pancakes even though it was something he professed to hate because they sat too heavy in his stomach, chose to ignore the fact that it was nine o'clock in the morning on Tuesday and, normally, he and Levi would both have been at work. He chose to ignore these in favor of answering Levi's question, because this was normal, now, this was exactly what he'd come to expect every morning after swimming out of the depths of his dreams and shaking the cobwebs of sleep out of his thoughts. 

"That's your medicine," he said, firmly, turning back to the sink, where he was attempting to scrub away a particularly stubborn scrap of burnt pancake from a frying pan. "You take it every morning and evening." 

"Oh." Levi fiddled around with the pill a bit more. "Am I sick?" 

Erwin sighed, hiding his disappointment under a stream of running water. The tap was running particularly hot that day, burning against his hands and turning them red, but he kept them buried beneath the suds, the pain cutting through the numbness that had buried him beneath its ennui, slow creeping fingernails crawling up his spine with every breath and every word and every second where Levi was still sick. Briefly, the thought that he might never be able to feel again dashed across Erwin's mind, and he shook his head roughly to clear it out of his synapses. 

"Yes, you are, but the medicine will help you feel better," he replied, wondering how long he could keep the charade up. 

Hope was a funny thing, fickle and fragile, shattering crystal baubles and soap suds that dissipated into the ether at the slightest provocation. And yet, Erwin found himself hopelessly captivated by their silky translucence, felt himself addicted and intoxicated by the shining slick feeling that hope gave him, buried somewhere beneath his emotional paralysis.

"Alright, then," Levi said, doubtfully. "I'll trust you."  

And trust, hope's faithful companion. Blind and willing to follow Erwin's lead. Abstract concepts that had no meaning, not anymore, not ever and never again. Erwin rubbed the titanium ring on his left hand with the thumb of his right.

Love was blind, too, he reasoned with himself, arguing his mind back from the grey fog of depression it had cornered itself in. And he loved Levi, loved him beyond words, beyond measure. Certainly he did, without a doubt. 

* * *

 

Erwin had thought, mistakenly and foolishly, that the little yellow circles had been working, had stalled, if not stopped, the decline of Levi's acuity. 

Two weeks after starting the pills, Levi had eyed him over the breakfast table and had told him, in no uncertain terms, that they would have to clear out his office for the new researcher and professor coming in. 

"They said they'd give you a sabbatical," Erwin said cautiously, the piece of toast he'd been working his way through suddenly sticking in his throat. He had woken up that morning with a particularly bad headache, and hadn't had the heart to deal with a meltdown triggered by the sudden remembrance and realization of the events the past two weeks, the past few months, the past few years had brought them. "Remember?"

"No, of course." Levi had rolled his eyes, taking a sip of his orange juice as he adjusted his glasses. "They said they were giving me a sabbatical but what they really mean is that they're letting me go. Tossing me out like yesterday's newspaper." 

Erwin had waited, his left hand curling into a fist against his thigh beneath the table, waiting for the outburst that he was dreading would follow. His words of consolation, of comfort, had refused to make their way past his throat, and he had been left breathless, unsure, unsteady around Levi in a way that he had never had cause to be before. 

"So..." Levi had said, arching an eyebrow at him across the table. "We need to go pack it up. And make sure the files are organized and all that other shit." 

"Are you sure about this?" Erwin had asked, his fingers slowly unfurling, aching with the cramp. "I mean, we can wait a week or so, or until they call you about it, or -"

"I'll forget," Levi had said, shortly, cutting Erwin off. "So we have to do it now, preferably today, or else it'll never get done." Catching Erwin's look, he had reached over the table, patting Erwin's right hand, which was resting limp by his plate. "I know it's hard," he had murmured, his voice soothing, low, shooting back memories of syllables slurred with sleepiness and fatigue, pillow talk of fantasy and hope, kindling a soft golden hope in the pit of Erwin's subconscious to slash through the grey shadows that hung around his thoughts like a shroud. "I know." 

Erwin had agreed to help Levi move his things out of his office that day. 

* * *

 

"What am I sick with?" Levi asked, examining the pill by his plate. He had abandoned the rest of his pancakes, pushing them to the side of his plate. "Did we not have oatmeal?" he continued, now, and Erwin curled his hands into fists below the sudsy water, ignoring the way his nails cut crescents into his palms. "I don't like pancakes." 

"You have Alzheimer's," Erwin replied, after he had managed to take a few calming breaths and unclench his jaw. Anger, surprisingly, had made a quick return, always ready and incandescent beneath the sounds of Erwin's syllables. Anger, sadness, despair. Three emotions that Erwin had taken to heart. "And you said you wanted pancakes this morning. Please take your medicine, Levi." 

"It mustn't be working," Levi mused, picking up the pill and examining it through squinted eyes, "if I forgot." 

"No," Erwin muttered, turning on the tap so water gushed into the sink below, loud and burbling and drowning out the rest of Levi's words, if there were any. He couldn't bear to have his thoughts voiced aloud. "No, I don't think it is." 

* * *

 

The tartan blanket Levi kept draped over his chair had gone into the bottom of the cardboard box first. It had been soft beneath Erwin's fingertips, balding in some threadbare places, a few tassels on the border fraying and falling apart from what had probably been many late nights and many cups of tea and anxious pacing about research results. The photographs had gone next: their first dance at their wedding reception, their picture at Ghirardelli Square, the candid portrait the wedding photographer had captured during their vows, hands clasped, shaky, uncertain, steadier than they'd ever been together knowing that the words they were saying were binding, steadfast and promises in every sense of the word. 

The calendar from last year and its torn out pages had been left on the ground, scattered chaos, dates and weeks and months left to make their own way in the tempest. 

Levi had gestured to Erwin to take a seat while he started up his computer, blowing away dust from the monitor. 

"I'm just going to put all these files in order," he had said, smiling apologetically, and Erwin had nodded, setting down the box of Levi's personal effects, and looking at the office, which looked barren, grey, the same office they had stepped into decades ago. But no. That office had been empty, slate, the paint still drying and fresh against the walls. It had been a possibility, an opportunity, and here it was now, full circle, the end, the possibilities and opportunities exhausted because time had been ignored and violated and spent unwisely. 

* * *

 

"It tastes bad," Levi complained, now, like he complained every morning as he placed the chalky yellow circle on his tongue and folded it into his mouth, swallowing it down with exaggerated gulps of water. "What did you say this was for again?" 

Erwin sighed. Hope shattered, again and again and again, and Erwin privately thought that he'd run out, a long time ago, had been running on fumes for far longer than he'd care to admit. 

"It's just vitamins," he murmured now. The pills had been vitamins, supplements, for calcium and for vitamin C and for everything else under the sun that someone making a transition into old age might need to take, because sometimes, if Erwin was tired enough, he could almost fool himself into thinking that he was telling the truth. It was self-indulgent, to a fault, but Erwin's wildest fantasies had become dominated by a Levi who had a full head of silver hair, pipe dreams that he had already accepted probably would not come to fruition. "It's good for you."

"Sure," Levi agreed, hopping up and carrying his half-empty plate over to the sink. "All the good things for you taste bad." 

Erwin watched his husband wander away, steps lazy and unfocused, and sighed again. It was something he had been doing a lot of lately. 

* * *

 

Files in order, they had stepped out of the office, and had almost been out of the lab entirely when Levi made an abrupt about-turn and headed back to his office.

"What, did you forget something?" Erwin asked; it hadn't been until the words were already out of his mouth before he cringed at how they sounded, at how tactless they were. 

"That was in bad taste," Levi had scolded him, his back turned as he tugged at the nameplate outside the door. He had muttered a short curse to himself after a few fruitless attempts, before digging in his pocket to pull out his house key, and using the point of it to unscrew the plate. "I worked too hard for this thing," Levi had said, huffing as he returned to Erwin's side, slotting the plate carefully into place on the side of the box. "We'd only leave it behind over my cold, dead body."

"Now that," Erwin had said, the faint smile on his face feeling far more forced than it had any right to - "was in bad taste." He had held open the door for Levi, and Levi had sailed through without another backward glance, a period to the sentence, the last paragraph of the chapter, the last chapter of this book of his life finished and slotted away. 

* * *

After he finished washing up the dishes, he walked into the living room to find Levi curled up on the sofa, lying down, curled on his side with a pillow clutched to his chest as he watched the flickering images on the television, some cooking show that Erwin was quite sure they had never watched a second of in their lives. 

"Hey," he said, quietly, sitting down slowly beside Levi and slinging an arm over the back of the couch. "Are you feeling alright?" 

"No." Levi's voice was muffled, the pillow pressed to his mouth. "Don't feel good." 

"Do you need to throw up?" Erwin asked, turning to look at him fully now, concerned. "Does your head hurt? What's going on?" 

* * *

 

Three nights ago, Levi had woken up in the middle of the night, clumsy footsteps slapping towards the bathroom stumbling Erwin out of sleep. The sound of Levi coughing, gagging, had him fully alert, and his footsteps had followed, sucking against the tiles only a minute later as he'd hauled himself out of bed. 

The low lights had been on in the bathroom, and Levi had been half-bent over his sink, his knuckles white as they clutched against the tile. 

He had been shaky, feverish, clammy against Erwin's hand as he'd turned to him for a brief inspection before leaning over the sink again. His lips, pale, thin, chapped, had been flecked with white foam, dry gags and sobs spilling from his throat in equal measure. 

_"Side effects seen previously include nausea, cramps, insomnia, headache..."_ The list had gone on and on, but the tiny bauble of hope Dr. Morgan had given him all those weeks ago had outshone the dark mist of negativity and risk threatening to cloud out the horizon. 

Erwin had patted his back, rubbing in soft, soothing circles, had led him back to bed after Levi had brushed his teeth thoroughly once, twice, three times, and, when Levi had woken up three hours later, screaming himself out of a nightmare, Erwin had soothed him back to sleep and had spent the next three hours awake. 

* * *

 

Fatigue settled into his bones, aching, trembling, and he pinched at the bridge of his nose to stave away a headache. 

"I'm just sad," was the muffled reply. "I failed you." 

For half a second, Erwin almost considered agreeing. Almost. 

"No," he murmured instead, patting absentmindedly at Levi's ankle and watching as the woman on the television screen chopped up a handful of what looked like parsley, but was a bit of a blur. Erwin squinted, rubbing at his eyes, but the green smear persisted. "You're doing fine. You've done just fine." 

"I'm a horrible husband." 

"No," Erwin said, more firmly now. "You're fantastic." 

The woman droned on about biscuits and dough rising for a few moments as Levi peeked out at him from behind the pillow, contemplating, vulnerable, and Erwin thought that he had never seen Levi so raw and naked before. 

"Really?" he asked, taking the pillow away from his mouth. 

"Yeah, really." Erwin tried to smile, but the smile faded away quickly from the corners of his mouth, realizing it was imposing, an intruder on unfamiliar terrain. 

Levi nodded, accepting, trusting, and turned back to the television screen, the altercation forgotten as quickly as it had begun, and Erwin was vaguely envious of the way Levi had been able to forget his sadness, mercurial from one second to the next. 

He had come into the marriage and the relationship with his eyes wide open, alert and noting every detail, but that wasn't love. It had been infatuation and adoration and adulation. But love was blind, and after ages spent together, Erwin was overjoyed, ecstasy tempered with anguish, to find that his vision was finally starting to fade. 


	29. Again, Time

 

It happened in Costco, at the pharmacy and glasses counter, where Erwin was picking up his new reading glasses and a refill on Levi's prescription medication, the one that, with every yellow pill that disappeared down Levi's throat, made him lose just a little bit more hope. Erwin could see the bottom of the well, far below, gleaming slick and rocky, and he pulled away, frantic, from the edge, trying, and failing, to convince himself that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. 

Levi was examining a box of toothpaste in a stand by the counter, turning the blue carton over and over in his hand, seemingly fascinated by the swirls of bright green and blue. The man in front of them at the pharmacy line was muttering into his phone, sounding rather agitated and absentminded, as his children, a little boy and a little girl, ran rampant around his legs, giggling and holding up their arms for "Daddy to hold them." He brushed them off with well-meaning smiles and his free hand ruffling through their hair, and Erwin smiled vaguely, automatically, as the little girl ran into the side of his leg. 

She picked herself up, the ribbons of her pigtails coming undone, looking up at him with awe. 

The man tutted, telling the person on the phone to hold on while he smiled apologetically at Erwin and grabbed the little girl by the hand. 

"So sorry," he mouthed, and Erwin just shrugged, as if to say, Children. What could you do about them? 

"Oh, my God," Levi gasped, as he darted back to Erwin, toothpaste box still clutched firmly in his hand. "Oh, my God, Erwin." 

"What? What is it?" Erwin asked, shuffling forward in line and trying not to wince at the death grip Levi currently had on his arm. "What's the matter, Lee?" 

"The baby," Levi hissed in a voice that was anything but subtle. Erwin could feel the eyes of the customers behind them in line boring into his back, curious. Judgmental. 

"What baby?" Erwin asked, sighing and pinching at the bridge of his nose to stave off an impending headache. He could feel it already, creeping into the crevices of his mind with inky fingertips, coating his brain slick with aches and throbs of agony. 

"Oh, my God!" Levi all but shouted, running his hands through his hair in a panic, his eyes wide as the box of toothpaste clattered to the floor. The other shoppers weren't even trying to disguise their curiosity anymore, and were gawking openly. Only a mild irritation made it through to tickle at his soul - Erwin lived in a grateful fog of numbness and inanimation, suspended in his life, and the time for strong emotions like anger or joy had come and gone to be replaced with milder, more mediocre counterparts swathed in grey. "Oh, my God, I left her at home, Erwin," Levi sobbed, whipping off his glasses and scrubbing furiously at his eyes with the back of one hand. "What if she rolled out of her crib? What if she hit her head on edge of the bassinet?" 

Levi rattled off a list of potential scenarios, ranging from kidnapping to carbon monoxide poisoning to SIDS, until Erwin was absolutely sure that if he gritted his teeth any harder he was in danger of fracturing his jaw. The other customers were probably already pulling out their phones to call Child Protective Services, probably thought him a horrible father, a horrible husband, a horrible person in general. 

"We have to go," Levi sobbed, melting down as he tried to tug Erwin towards the front of the store. "Right now, Erwin." 

"Levi, Levi, calm down," Erwin murmured softly, soothingly, trying not to attract any more attention than they were already. "We don't have a baby." And there it was, the words that he'd never strung together, the words that he'd never quite been able to bring himself to use for fear that saying them aloud would make them true in a way that he hadn't been able to accept before. "The adoption fell through, remember? We didn't get approved for it." 

Levi stared up at him, eyes glassy, glossy with half-remembered, half-imagined grievances. 

"No, you don't understand," he said, slowly, shaking his head. "I put her down for a nap before we left and she was so quiet that I...I didn't think it would be okay to disturb her because you know how much trouble it takes to get her down, and I -" He cut himself off, frowning down at the speckled tile floor of the grocery store. 

Erwin waited patiently, trying to ignore the weight of unconcealed pity and concern that peppered the other customers' expressions.

"Sasha's at home," Levi finished, with a grin. Pity and concern turned to curiosity at the new introduction into the situation. "She'll take good care of her, I'm sure, being the birth mother and all that." 

"Next!" the attendant at the pharmacy called out, and Erwin all but dragged Levi along with him. 

"I'm sure she is," he said, defeated, as he handed the pharmacy technician the prescriptions and she went off to rummage around the rows of neatly alphabetized medicines. 

He tried to pick his battles wisely, tried to layer armor heavy against Levi's oblivious jabs and needle sharp sentences, but Levi had always been able to find the cracks in his defenses, painted in his words and sent off to fight his wars where Erwin was ally and antagonist, both and neither. 

* * *

 

Levi seemed to have forgotten all about the altercation in the supermarket when they arrived home, humming happily to himself, all traces of his earlier anxiety gone as he told Erwin to go and wash up because he was planning to start dinner soon. 

As Erwin moved up the staircase, the third step from the bottom creaking in its familiar way, he trailed his hand up the banister and imagined it was smooth underneath his palm, sanded down from little hands sliding down it as tiny feet trampled down the stairs, giggling, laughing, running into his legs as he met these ghost children at the bottom of the stairs. 

No, he thought to himself, shaking his head. That wouldn't do. The maple beneath his palm was smooth because they had ordered it that way, because Levi polished the banisters religiously, because of everything but the idea of children. 

He paused at the landing at the top of the stairs. The nursery - no, the spare bedroom, he really had to remember to keep calling it that - door was open, just the slightest bit, even though they hadn't had guests since ages before Levi got sick, even though that room had been closed off as a silent boundary in between what their lives were and what their lives could have been. 

He approached, with caution, pushing the door open on creaky hinges that hadn't been oiled in years. 

Levi should have been relaxing in the rocking chair by the mobile, a mug of chamomile tea and a novel in his hands, a fuzzy tartan blanket draped over his lap. A baby should have been there, too, watching the little cupcake mobile rotating overhead with stars in its eyes. A lump knotted impossibly tight in Erwin's throat as he swiped away the tears threatening to fog over his vision. Imagination was cruel in its vivacity, and Erwin wondered if it would diminish with age, too. 

"I just got Marie down for her nap," Levi would explain, turning to Erwin with a sunny smile on his face. Marie, or Levi Jr., or whatever they'd decided to name the adopted baby in this little demented fantasy of his own. 

Erwin would smile, he would approach the bassinet and the rocking chair like he was doing now, setting his briefcase down and opening his arms for a hug that Levi would step into with a fingertip pressed against the seal of Erwin's lips to warn him to be quiet. 

He would press a kiss to Levi's cheek, would look over into the bassinet, and - 

Erwin's fantasy was shattered by the bundle of white swaddled in a thick blanket, resting in the center of the tiny crib mattress. 

A strangled, choked sob of laughter that had no business in his fantasy, demented or otherwise, tore itself from his throat, ugly, horrendous, and Erwin started crying in earnest, something he should have been doing from the very beginning, washes of catharsis stroking saline across his tongue. His arms wrapped tight around each other, hugging himself tight to keep himself from shattering apart, as he looked at the rapidly defrosting chicken, swaddled tight in a white blanket. 

* * *

 

Dinner that night was, rather ironically, roast chicken - Erwin had hidden the chicken back in the sink when Levi's back was turned. He had felt slightly cheap about it, had wanted to laugh when Levi plopped it on the table, brown and crispy, and bit at the inside of his cheek to stifle the strangled sound of his own vulnerability from creeping out of his soul. 

* * *

Levi flung himself on top of Erwin that night, mouth pressed clumsily to Erwin's, two sets of reading glasses getting in the way, frames clicking plastic against metal and glass, and despite his best intentions, despite the overwhelming shards of insanity wrapping themselves tight around his psyche, Erwin fell into the kiss Levi bestows against him, reaching up with the hand that wasn't currently tangled in Levi's hair to pluck off two sets of glasses and place them on the nightstand. 

Levi's features were still sharp, still crystal clear, a small miracle that Erwin is inordinately grateful for. He tasted like tea leaves, bitter and citrus and sweet against Erwin's tongue, and Erwin licked into the crevice of his mouth, tasting Levi's love on every breath and every exhaled moan. 

"I love you," he whispered softly against Levi's lips. "even if you served up our proverbial baby for dinner tonight." 

"What are you talking about?" Levi mumbled, pulling away, features slowly blurring out of sharp definition as he leaned back to tug his shirt over his head. "You're going all crazy on me, old man." 

Erwin smiled, helpless, breathless, as Levi unzipped his pants. 

"But I love you, too," he whispered, soft against Erwin's pulse as he buried his face into the crook of Erwin's neck. "even if you're going insane." 

Erwin wrested his orgasm from him, soft and sweet and tender with half-remembered, half-imagined fantasies, streaks of lava against his skin. 

 


	30. Again, Meet

Erwin had gotten quite good at denial, at numbing himself from those pesky things we called emotions, at walling himself off desperate and uninhibited and voracious from the realities of the whirlwind that filled his daily life with unease. A shoe here, where it wasn't supposed to be, the milk going stale and curdling underneath the bathroom counter, Levi asking him where he'd left his book, and then, four minutes later, asking again because he'd walked out of the room with every intention to retrieve the novel, thoughts dissipating out of sight and out of mind the moment he stepped outside the doorway. 

Erwin had had half a mind to move or at the very least dismantle the baby bassinet, had had half a mind to paint over the stenciled zoo animals dancing, prancing along the lower strips of wall, had even gotten so far as to pick out a paint color in a soothing shade of cream, but he hadn't been able to bring himself to go to the store and point to the paint chip to indicate that he wanted to make a change. 

But the universe, and the plaques forming incandescent and filamentous around Levi's neurons, had other plans, bowling Erwin headlong into his reluctant acceptance of the inevitability, the crashing conclusion of their love story. 

* * *

 

It started that morning, when Levi had woken up, stared at him for a few moments, and then asked him what he was doing in his bed. 

Erwin's ears had filled with a roaring sound, desperate and violent, a waterfall, a deluge. Had he been expecting this? Yes. Somewhere deep inside his soul, gnawing away at the pitfalls and crevices of his mind, he had been expecting this, waiting for this to happen, every muscle tense with sickening anticipation. 

But even the expected can take us by surprise, and even the best made plans can get thrown off course by the whimsy of the cosmos and karmic retribution for past sins.

And, for lack of a better way to put it, Erwin's entire itinerary, what he'd centered his life around and planned for, had gone completely to shit. Words ripped themselves apart, and he found himself breathless in the face of Levi's confusion. 

He had prepared for this moment with sickening disgust that he was doing so, had steadied himself and readied himself, and the best preparations in the universe weren't enough against the consuming maelstrom of the disease that was tearing Levi away from him, fingertip by fingertip, syllable by syllable, and his grip was slipping, frantic, furious though he might try to hold on. 

* * *

 

Levi had puttered into the living room some time ago, one thick binder of his dissertation clutched beneath his arm, but Erwin could hear him laughing at some sitcom on television. The sound was cheery, blissful in its ignorance, and Erwin envied him even as he tried to rub the beginnings of a smile off his face. 

It was a delightful sound to hear, after weeks and months of gasps and sobs, and Erwin savored every chime of Levi's laughter, tucking it away to carry him through cold nights, threading the sound golden and neat and crisp through his thoughts so he would never forget the way Levi laughed, childlike, with abandon. 

He finished washing up - Levi had broken three cups just the other day alone, deteriorating, frustrating, with every passing day - and went to join him in the living room to the sounds of Levi's laughter melding with the laugh track on the TV. 

"Hey, what are you watching?" Erwin asked, plopping down beside him. Levi took off his glasses, wiping his eyes with merriment. 

"I don't know," he said, quite simply, and Erwin sighed even as a smile burbled its way into existence. He wrapped an arm around Levi's shoulders, soft, soothing, the set of Levi's body neat against his own like it had always been, like it would always be. 

* * *

 

"Who are you?" Levi had asked, eyebrows knitting in confusion even as his hand reached beside him to scrabble at the nightstand for his glasses. He had jammed them onto his eyes, squinting through the lenses at Erwin, eyes recognizing, but tongue unable to bring the needed name to his lips. 

Erwin had been at a loss for words, at first. "I'm your husband," he'd blurted out. 

Levi had shaken his head, hair falling into his eyes. "No, that can't be right," he'd said, tone confused and desperate in his puzzlement. "I've only got a boyfriend. Although..." He had tilted his head to the side, looking at Erwin from a different angle as though that might help him figure out who he was. "I guess you kind of look like him?" 

"Levi, how old are you?" Erwin had asked, still stunned. 

"Twenty-six." The answer had been quick, affirmative, definite, and Erwin had bit at the inside of his cheek to stave away the words that had come bubbling to his mouth. It still stung. 

"Tell me about your boyfriend," he had said, finally. This, miraculously, coerced a smile out of Levi. 

"Well, his name's Erwin," Levi had said, grinning in reminiscence. "He's got these really thick eyebrows, so thick you can't miss them, and this blonde hair that's as yellow as corn. Like I said, you kinda look like him. But he's twenty-nine, see, and no offense, but you look....older." 

It was true. The past few years had aged him far beyond mid-forties, and his face was littered with wrinkles, his hair shot through with grey. He was old. Felt older. 

"What do you like about him?" Erwin had asked. 

"I like the way he makes breakfast in bed, or tries to. He usually burns the toast," Levi had murmured, whispering it as though it were a big secret. "I like the way he smiles. I like the way he smells like aftershave and soap and clean linen, even if he hasn't taken a shower yet. I like the way he holds my hand on the train, even when I tell him I don't like it." 

Erwin had frowned, trying to remember. He supposed those had been things they'd done, back then, hand holding on train, rubbing affection in the faces of the disbelievers. He hadn't held Levi's hand in a very long time, and he had reached out, then, to take it. 

Levi, surprisingly, hadn't pulled away. 

"You must be time traveling Erwin," Levi had concluded. "You hold my hand the same way. If it's not against the rules of your secret society, how old are you? Are you seventy?" 

Erwin had bitten back a bitter laugh. "Yeah, something like that," he'd replied. 

Levi had nodded, as though this made perfect sense. "Do we live a happy life together?" he had asked. "Grow old together, have three pugs named Geoffrey, Clementine, and Arabella? Or are you not allowed to tell me?" 

"We have a great life together," Erwin had said, giving in with a smile that, for the first time in ages, felt normal. "I'll tell you all about it later. I have to get clearance from the board." 

"Right, right." 

* * *

If you love someone, let them go.  Erwin thought that he might finally be able to understand that adage, as he watched Levi now, giggling at the television set, the binder of his dissertation set aside. 

He accepted it, held it fully with open arms. He had lost. He knew that, he understood it, and it settled deep and polished, a soft core of hurt into the bottom of his soul, clicking neatly into place and freeing up the rest of his heart to light. With one swift aside to the universe to be kind and gentle to his husband's soul, Erwin gave up. 

He watched Levi snort at a particularly bad pun, before pulling out his phone and recording the sounds of Levi's laughter. 

It was at that moment that Erwin decided to start capturing the memory of Levi. 


	31. Again, Confess

 

Dr. Morgan looked nothing short of disappointed when Erwin called him up to inform him that they would probably be dropping out of the clinical trials for the prescription medication. He hedged his bets, sounding uncertain over the staticky connection of the telephone wires, and asked if perhaps Erwin wouldn't be willing to stick it out just another month or so, to see if it had any long-term changes or whatnot. 

Erwin had answered, unequivocally, in a tone that had brooked no disagreement, that he, that they, weren't interested. Levi, who was snuggled up next to him on the couch, agreed, without the faintest idea of what Erwin was talking about. 

Erwin smiled back at him, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead, silver and ebony strands of hair tickling at his nose. 

He knew Erwin this morning, inside and out, understood and comprehended what was happening to him, and Erwin praised whatever higher beings were watching out for them for these small, soft, sweet moments of clarity. Sure, they were fewer and farther between, the last vestiges of one just barely enough to coax Erwin to get out of bed some mornings until another bright spot in the milky murk of Levi's mind popped up again, an eye in a storm, a rest in a hurricane, and Erwin lived for them with a survivalist desperation that terrified and amazed him. 

The little chalky yellow circles, hope installed in every morsel, grew cobwebs in the medicine cabinet of their kitchen, an orange bottle of salvation slowly going stale. They made Levi sick, made him run shaky to the bathroom on trembling legs to gag into the porcelain of their sink, they made him sleepy and lethargic and disoriented, and for what? For nothing, or so it seemed. Happiness was a frame of mind, and Erwin oriented his mindset to look straight ahead. 

Erwin and Levi, became ErwinandLevi, became Erwin and Levi again, a transition that would happen soon, sooner than he wanted who knew, three years, five years, seven if Erwin was horrendously lucky. 

Erwin had to confess, even to himself, that it was a depressing thought, but it was something that, in due time, he'd learned to understand and learned to accept, a small smidgen of a fact like how the sun rose over the horizon every day and how, like clockwork, it went to sleep over the sky opposite every evening. 

His beautiful, sweet Levi, passing light over a few lovely, charmed decades of his life before eclipsing back into the soft stillness of the night. 

* * *

 

"Promise me you'll at least try to be happy when I'm gone." 

Levi had said this one morning, the sky still grey with a sun that hadn't deigned to wake up yet and grace the earth with its golden presence. They had both been lying side by side, awake, barely touching, the edges of their pinkies brushing together on the cotton sheets, but it was enough. 

"It'll be hard," Erwin had confessed, finally, his hand creeping over the bedsheets to rest on top of Levi's. "You know that." 

"Yeah, but you have to at least try. Don't forget to do it." 

Erwin had turned his head then, mouth already open to make some sort of gentle retort and reprimand about Levi's poor taste in jokes. 

Levi's eyelashes were fluttering, casting birds of shadows winging across his cheeks in the milky light of pre-dawn. He had been looking up at the ceiling fan spinning lazily overhead, each swish of the wooden blades clicking soft as it cut through the air. 

Erwin memorized the way he looked before he woke up fully, memorized the way he looked without his glasses, young and innocent and filled with a sort of pleasant naivety about his mortality and his mistakes. He had had a certain je ne sais quoi about him, had always had it, but it had been tempered with the crows' feet and strands of silver littering his hair, a model of maturity that Erwin considered himself truly fortunate to have been present to watch blossom across the face of his greatest love. 

"Alright. I promise."

* * *

 

"Alright, then," Dr. Morgan said, over the telephone, sounding subdued and resigned, and Erwin wanted to reach through the speaker, wanted to tell him not to be sad, because the time for that had come and gone long ago. "I'm sorry to hear that you won't be participating in the trials anymore."

"That's okay," Erwin replied. "Thanks for your assistance." 

"And, Mr. Smith?" 

"Yes?" 

"Best of luck to you." 

Erwin had bought a scrapbook, butter soft leather covers and smooth-edged heavy cream paper of card stock, the minuscule metal clips on every page waiting to be filled with photos, with words. 

He opened it on his lap now, and Levi watched him in vague amusement and vague curiosity. 

"Since when did you take up scrapbooking?" he asked, hand reaching out to trace along the ivory smoothness of the pages. "Or did I forget that too?" 

"Nah, I just started recently," Erwin said, smiling fondly as he ruffled a hand through Levi's hair. "Do you want to help me put it together? You probably have much better taste and artistic sense than I do." 

"Well, of course," Levi said, rolling his eyes and pulling the scrapbook toward him. "What is it for?" 

"It's for you," Erwin replied, grinning. "To help you remember." 

* * *

He had spent the better part of the past two weeks digging out old photographs, having them retouched, printing out rolls upon rolls of film from his iPhoto library and an old camera he'd found in a box in the garage. He had amassed the pictures into a cardboard box, handling each glossy square with the utmost care and delicateness, holding them by the corners as he smiled at Levi at twenty-four, Levi at thirty-three, Levi at forty. 

Two decades' worth of Levi, twenty long and beautiful years. 

Erwin had nearly gotten lost in the memories, the day whiling away and the strip of sunlight along the floor meandering slowly across the carpet, had nearly gotten lost in a lovely labyrinth of Levi, Levi, Levi, until his Levi, the one he had now, called him to come and eat dinner. 

They had tomato soup and cheese sandwiches for the fourth night in a row. Erwin had eaten it gamely, smiling across the table at Levi, who still, despite all the years and despite all the losses, still ate his sandwiches with his pinkies out. 

* * *

 

Levi ruffled through the photographs now, pulling out a few and squinting at them, examining them carefully through the lenses of his glasses. 

"I look so young here," he exclaimed, flipping through the glossy pages. "When did you find the time to take all these?"

"When you weren't looking," Erwin confessed, a slight smile growing larger, beaming brighter, as Levi picked up a photograph - him, asleep, lying half on and off their old broken couch, a book open across his belly, its spine creaky with wear and tear, the fondness of a novel well loved - and slotted it neatly into four metallic clips. 

 


	32. Again, Celebrate

 

"Happy anniversary of the first time we kissed, Levi," Erwin announced, smiling as he pushed his way into the bedroom, a tea tray laden with cinnamon toast and two steaming mugs of English Breakfast Twinings tea heavy in his hands. He woke Levi up with kisses and soft soothing promises of a - miraculously unburnt - breakfast in bed, and when Levi finally woke up, propping himself up on his elbows and blinking groggily up at him, Erwin was gratified that his husband had woken up in a plane of existence that included him. 

Though, in today's universe, he was a time traveler, bound by the laws of his secret society not to divulge any more information about himself and the lives they'd led together. He watched Levi take a bite of toast, scattering crumbs all over the blankets. His appetite had returned in full force since they'd stopped the trials, and Erwin no longer woke up in the middle of the night to the sounds of Levi gagging in the bathroom, no longer had to worry about checking beneath Levi's tongue and in the pockets of his cheeks to make sure he'd swallowed the chalky yellow circle twice a day. 

The moments of brilliant clarity were fewer, farther between, and Erwin watched for them with peeled eyes. 

It no longer hurt quite so much when Levi peered at him over the black rims of his glasses and asked him, in a mild tone, who he was. It no longer ached, quite so much, when his colleagues at Sina Technologies called him and asked him how Levi was doing, as if they expected some sort of miracle that Erwin had long ago stopped hoping for and agonizing over. 

"He's fine," he would reply, and he meant it, truth and conviction finding homes in the pockets of his syllables. Levi was happy, sorting through the photographs and slotting them neatly into their metallic clips on the creamy pages of the scrapbook, a beatific smile on his face. Organization soothed him,making sense of a disordered world, and so what if he put a photograph of him at thirty-four next to a photograph of him at his graduation from grad school, gripping his diploma with fingers clutched tightly around the scroll as though afraid someone might swoop in to take the title of Dr. Ackerman away from him? 

So what? 

It didn't matter, not one whit, and Erwin told Levi the stories behind the pictures whenever he would flap one glossy square at him by the corner, accompanied by a questioning look and an arched eyebrow. 

Erwin looked over the slide deck he would present the following week over a video conference, but his attention kept slipping, kept drifting away from the blue glow of the screen to watch Levi, who was furrowing his eyebrows and writing something out on a piece of blank copy paper. His handwriting, much to both their dismay, had gotten shakier, less sure, the curves and straight edges of the letters running jagged and wild over the page, and, a few days ago, Levi had pushed a stack of printer paper into Erwin's chest and asked him to please write it in the scrapbook for him. 

Erwin had gone through the stack that night, his hand cramping as he tried to condense Levi's words into the small blank areas of the scrapbook's pages. Levi's letters had been childlike, uneven, and Erwin had wondered, for the briefest of moments, if this was what their child's handwriting would have looked like, learning to write and learning to communicate through ink and paper. 

The door to the room at the top of the stairs was left open now, and Erwin could find Levi there some afternoons, sitting in the window seat, humming to himself as he watched the leaves fall into their autumn blankets outside. The cradle and the rocking chair, dishearteningly still, had lost their hold over Erwin, and he found himself able to look at them without wanting to turn away. The smooth white wood of the bassinet invited Erwin to look at it, invited Erwin to look ahead towards the future where, maybe, just maybe, it might be filled, the cupcake mobile lazily swinging overhead with its little tinny chimes. 

He had promised Levi he'd try to be happy after his silhouette had already faded from the foundation of Erwin's life, and, though he knew it would be hard, he thought that it might no longer be impossible. 

* * *

 

"I can't believe you remembered!" Levi exclaimed, grinning and spitting out crumbs of cinnamon toast all over the coverlet. "You must be going senile by now, I can't believe you still remembered!" 

Erwin rolled his eyes before leaning down to press a soft kiss to the part of Levi's hair, riddled with silver. 

"You used to do these, you know," he said, the gentle note of a tease in his voice, watching gladly as Levi scarfed down the rest of the toast. "You used to wake up on every single anniversary that we had together, even ones that I'd forgotten, and you used to let me eat breakfast in bed even though you hated it when I got crumbs all over the sheets." 

Levi looked around him at the resulting carnage, before reaching for his mug of tea with a shrug. "I guess I can make some exceptions for you." He took a sip, before frowning up at Erwin. "You do treat me well in the future, right? I won't regret being nice to you now?" 

Erwin grinned, reaching out to steady Levi's cup, which was in danger of spilling and sloshing its boiling contents onto the sheets, held as it was in Levi's trembling grip. "Of course, Levi. I treat you like a king." 

"Oh, good." Levi smiled sunnily up at him, but after a moment, slow and disheartening, he frowned. "Remind me of your name again, though?" 

"Erwin," he pronounced firmly, buying a few more minutes of Levi's time and attention, snatching it away from the universe, content with the small spoils he'd been granted. "We're married," he prompted, in the hopes of shaking out the Levi he had been talking to just a few moments ago. 

"Hm." Levi looked skeptical, gnawing at his lower lip, but, sweet, cautious, took another sip of tea. 

* * *

 

"What about this picture?" Levi asked later that afternoon, pressing the photo of them at Ghirardelli Square into his hands. "Who are these people?" 

"That's us," Erwin replied, clicking his laptop closed and giving Levi his full attention. "Do you remember?" 

Levi frowned at the picture, squinting at it through the lenses of his glasses. He shook his head after a few moments of tense examination. "Are you sure this is us?" he asked, uncertainly. "They look so different." 

"It's because we were a lot younger here," Erwin explained, with a rueful smile. "Why don't you get some paper, and I'll tell you the story again so I can put it in the scrapbook later?" 

At the mention of the scrapbook, Levi's face brightened, and he nodded eagerly, turning on his heel and heading to the living room for a pencil and paper. Erwin smiled at his retreating silhouette, waiting patiently for one minute, two, five, tapping his foot, until Levi came back into the kitchen to set another pile of photographs onto the mahogany table. 

"Weren't you going to get a pen and paper?" Erwin asked, slightly confused, as Levi deposited the photographs in a cascade of gloss onto the table. "For this picture." He held up the photograph at Ghirardelli Square again, the glossy paper making wobbling noises as he waggled it at Levi. 

Levi's eyebrows creased. "No, I wasn't," he said, confused. "I told you I was going to get more pictures." 

Erwin opened his mouth to protest, but Levi was already looking at him, hopeful and waiting, and he sealed away the thoughts for a later date as he picked up another photograph. 

 


	33. Again, Rejoice

He woke up to find Levi missing, the sheets still holding the memory of his body, the mattress still warm with the hollows of his half remembered dreams. Erwin sat up, slowly, propping himself up on one elbow and twisting to look at the clock. It was 9:23 A.M., cherry red numbers glowing fervently at him through sleep-encrusted eyes. 

And what a good dream it had been, too, Erwin thought ruefully as he sat all the way up, stretching the kinks out of his shoulders and neck. They had been having a conversation, lovely, simplistic, the sweetest rhythms of their words tangling together in a current of question and response, of meaningless events about their days peppered with sweet nothings and furtive hints of smiles at the remembrances. 

They had been sitting together at the kitchen table, the lamplight pooling in the planes of his cheekbones. He was twenty-six and thirty-four and forty all at once, and Erwin had marveled at the sight of him, drunk and intoxicated by the beauty of his greatest love. 

Two cups of tea sat between them on the table, steaming fragrance into the air between them, and Erwin had been overjoyed, positively ecstatic, to find that when Levi reached out to take a sip, his hand no longer trembled. 

* * *

 

He found Levi in the nursery, sitting at the window seat, his face propped on his folded arms as he stared out the window. It was overcast, soft, grey clouds blanketing and obscuring the patchwork quilt of azure that peeked through. 

"Hey, Lee," he said, footsteps soft against the hardwood, voice softer so as not to startle him. "What are you doing up so early?" 

"I miss her." Levi's voice was muffled against his arms. "I miss her a lot." 

"Who?" Erwin asked, slowly settling himself into the window seat next to him. "Who do you miss?"

"My mom." Levi's tone was moody, brooding, syllables lapping over into each other. "She died last year." 

Erwin's heart stuttered for a moment. He took a deep breath, one, two, five, waiting for his pulse to return to normal. "I'm sorry to hear that," he murmured, playing into the fantasy. "It must have been rough," he added after a moment, reaching out carefully, tentatively, placing an arm around Levi's shoulders. Levi leaned back into him, relaxing into him. The gold of his wedding band, reassuringly snug around his finger now, gleamed softly in the milky overcast light. 

After a few minutes, Levi tapped at Erwin's left wrist, resting on the windowsill. "You're not wearing your..." He paused, brows furrowed in thought. "Your hand clock," he finished, looking apologetic and slightly guilty. "I can't seem to remember the word right now." 

"A watch, you mean," Erwin informed him, pressing a kiss to the seashell curve of Levi's ear. 

"Yeah. You're not wearing your watch. How come? You always do." 

Erwin shrugged. "Time doesn't really matter," he replied, vaguely amazed at how easily the truth rolled off his tongue. 

"You took Marie to preschool, right?" Levi asked. Erwin was having a hard time keeping up with the jumping tracks of Levi's consciousness. 

"Marie?" he asked, in return. "I..." 

_ "I really like the name Marie. You can pick the name if it's a boy." _

_ "I like Levi, Jr."  _

"Oh. Yes, of course. Why do you think she's not here right now?" Erwin finished, trying to ignore the way the shiny white wood of the unused bassinet seemed to gleam at him accusingly out of the corner of his eye. Erwin knew, that by all means, he should have donated the bassinet and the changing table and the cupcake mobile to some other family, a long time ago, someone who would actually use them and fill their empty spaces with laughter and the soft whimpered mewls of a newborn in the middle of the night asking for attention. It probably wasn't healthy to have kept them standing still, frozen in time, and Erwin had no doubt that a therapist would have a field day trying to figure out what that particular decision said about him as a person. 

Why not? a voice whispered somewhere deep in the recesses of Erwin's mind. He could picture it now. 

A tiny dark-haired baby, staring up at him with curious almond eyes. A small dark-haired boy - or girl - rushing home from school, a backpack covered with cartoon characters dangling haphazardly off their shoulders, to show him their art project from the day. Junior high, high school, college, a series of degrees and diplomas and a lifetime of photographs and memories that he could eagerly share with Levi when they met again in the next life. 

"Look. This is our daughter. Our son," he would say, and Levi would fold his hands in his lap, crows' feet crinkling dark at the corners of his eyes, and he would ask Erwin to tell him the whole story. Erwin would, relishing it with every creamy page of scrapbook filled with pictures of the future of Levi's life, the glossy squares overflowing the boundaries for weeks on months on years. Enough pictures to fill an eternity. 

Maybe, the voice whispered, and Erwin held on to it, a lifeline for when Levi's scent - citrus, clean linen, the softness of sleep - would fade from the sheets. 

"I dunno." Levi's voice cut him out of his reverie, and the voice fell silent in reverence. "It's just you never make the crib so neatly. Do you think maybe we should put in a bigger bed for her? She's getting older now." 

"Maybe," Erwin murmured, pressing a kiss to the side of Levi's neck and inhaling the soft scent of sun-warmed citrus that trailed Levi like the most exquisite of perfumes. "Why don't we ask her when I pick her up later, okay?"

Levi nodded thoughtfully, and, true to form, by the time the afternoon rolled around, there was no longer any mention of Marie. 

* * *

 

Levi rolled towards him, drowsy finally, that night, when the cherry numbers on the digital alarm clock on the nightstand were already glowing 2:45. Erwin had closed the scrapbook only a few minutes ago, his voice grating hoarse from his recitations and his eyes sore from squinting at his cramped handwriting for the captions next to the photos. 

"That was a good story," Levi mumbled into the crease of Erwin's shoulder. "They looked really happy." 

"They are really happy," Erwin assured him, with a soft smile into the darkness. 

"Do you promise to finish it tomorrow?" Levi's syllables were slurry with fatigue and drowsiness. "Telling me the story?" 

"I can't promise that," Erwin replied, voice soft, soothing Levi down into his dreams. "Sorry, sweetheart." 

"Whu -" Levi yawned - "why not?" His eyelashes fluttered against Erwin's shoulder, fledgling birds taking wing. 

"Because you still have to help me write the ending," Erwin murmured after a few moments, but Levi had already fallen asleep, breathing soft and even against Erwin's skin.


	34. Again, Adore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, fuck, I cried at this chapter. 
> 
> Written to: Fragile Memories - Mokhov.

 

Forty-six comes and passes him by in a blur of decades, a flurry of numbers, and Erwin woke up the morning of his forty-sixth birthday with a sort of slow, smoldering wonder in the pit of his stomach that another year had come and gone, that another three hundred and sixty-five days was behind him already. 

Levi, beside him, was still asleep, breathing slow and even and steady with every rise and fall of his shoulders, and Erwin watched him, wanting, lovely adoration, traced the back and forth pendulum trajectory of his eyes underneath lowered lids. The corner of Levi's mouth twitched up, the fastest smile shaded in quicksilver brevity, and Erwin smiled back, helpless, breathless, and fervently wished that Levi was having a good dream. 

"God, I love you," he whispered, small syllables winding quick to the tip of his tongue, feeling perfectly at home. The syllables were round in his mouth, and he adored the taste of each and every one. 

Love was a beautiful disaster, loving Levi a shipwreck, and Erwin found that he welcomed the riptide coming to carry him away. 

But, mercury dreams aside, the current swelling just out of reach as Levi's eyelashes fluttered frantic against his cheeks, struggling out of the depths of slumber. Dark eyes, hazy and still crusted with the spoils of dreams, blinked at him, once, twice, narrowing. 

"Erwin." The name sounded unsure on Levi's tongue, the syllables sticking together. Unsteady. Uncertain. Trying too hard to convince himself, conviction sticking to every sound. "Erwin?" 

"Yes, that's my name," Erwin murmured, reaching out to cup Levi's face in one of his hands. He held his breath for a moment, watching Levi watching him, waiting for any more forthcoming memories. 

None were apparent, and Levi rolled over a few moments later, picking himself out of bed and shuffling to the bathroom. The water turned on a few moments later, spattering wetly against the tiles in the shower stall, and Erwin would have been lying if he said he wasn't just a tiny bit disappointed. 

* * *

 

"What have you got there, Levi?" Erwin had asked the previous week. Levi had been hunched over a piece of paper, covered with his now-childish handwriting, frowning at it and gnawing at his lower lip as his eyes moved across the page. "Is it another post for the scrapbook?" 

Levi had waved him away when Erwin had leaned closer. "It's for later," he had said, almost agitated, and Erwin had let the subject drop in abject surrender. "You can't put it in the book yet because then everything will be out of order and it won't make sense anymore."

Erwin had been tempted to tell him that the scrapbook was already far out of order, that the pictures looped crazily in whatever mood Levi had been feeling in that day, in whatever scraps of his past he'd managed to remember and glean from the glossy squares of photograph paper.

The numbers next to the photographs spiraled out of control, also, 2 next to 73 next to 145. The Levis and Erwins in the pictures aged forwards and backwards, twenty-four, forty, thirty-seven, all on the same page, drinking from the fountain of youth and finding maturity in a single breath. 

The blue ink curled over the edges of the allotted lines for manuscript, the tails of the gs and the ys curling up on themselves like snails, smudges at the ends of sentences where the side of Erwin's hand had dragged along the page. When he remembered, if he remembered, Levi could go on and on about a photograph for ages, easily covering the fronts and backs of three sheets of copy paper with his handwriting. The Rs were backwards on occasion, the L's also, and Erwin read them all, savoring everything he had to say. 

But for every picture that he remembered, for every detail and every scenario, another one was lost, and Erwin found himself writing in the captions to one of the pictures of Levi on their wedding day, the one he kept framed in wrought silver on the bookshelf downstairs. 

_ "The cake came from Urth Caffe. You remember, Levi? It's okay if you don't. It's a place that you love going to; it specializes in organic coffee and tea, and you always, always, always order Moroccan Mint even though you claim to like all their teas equally. I've never seen you drink anything else." _

He had traced the smudge of frosting that decorated the corner of that Levi's mouth with his thumb, remembering, and the Levi that had sat across from him looked at him curiously and asked him if he missed the man in the photograph, not knowing he was asking about himself. 

"Yes," Erwin had admitted, soft, simple. "I do miss him."

"I'm sorry," Levi had replied, sincerity coating his syllables with softness. He had reached over the table to pat Erwin's hand once, twice, reassuringly, the gold gleaming in the soft afternoon light. The apology had been twofold, double meanings hidden in the spaces between Levi's words, and Erwin had turned his hand over, watching how their fingers laced together neatly, tightly, puzzle pieces from the clay. 

"It's okay," he'd replied, equal sincerity, equal meaning, a blessing and a reassurance. 

* * *

 

Steam had started to drift across the bathroom, probably fogging up the mirrors already, and Erwin sighed, running a hand through his hair, greying, thinning. 

What was forty-six but a number, anyway? he reasoned to himself as he hauled himself out of bed and made his way into the bathroom, shedding his clothes in a neat pile in the laundry basket. Just a measure of time, man's foolish invention to try to help him capture infinity in the palm of his hand. 

Levi's skin was slick against his own. 

"I'm sorry." Levi's words were barely audible, nearly drowned out by the spattering spray. "I'm forgetting something." 

"It's okay," Erwin murmured, meaning it. 

* * *

 

Two weeks later, Erwin woke up to Levi shaking him, hands clasped tight around Erwin's shoulder. He leapt out of the soothing arms of sleep with a gasp, alert, adrenaline pounding itself vigorously through his heart and mind. 

"Happy Birthday, Erwin!" Levi crowed triumphantly, and once his gaze had focused enough, he glanced over to the nightstand where Levi had set a tray of toast - slightly burnt - and tea and a folded paper tucked beneath one of the mugs. "I remembered!" he said, proudly, handing Erwin the tray before climbing back into bed. 

Erwin smiled, helpless, breathless, the current sweeping his feet out from under him and carrying it along in its slipstream, powerless to resist. 

"Yes, you certainly did," he acknowledged, picking up the mug on the left and lifting the steaming tea to his mouth, nearly burning his tongue on the first sip. Levi cradled his mug in his hands, the words of the past peeking through his fingers, blowing the steam away. 

"And what's this?" Erwin asked, nodding towards the piece of folded paper on the tray. "A card?" 

Levi looked at it, his eyes narrowed, head tilted as he examined it. "I'm not sure," he admitted after a moment. "But I found it in the cabinet when I was making the tea, and there was a sticky on it telling me to give it to you on your birthday. See?" Levi pulled out a crumpled Post-it from the pocket of his nightshirt, and Erwin unfolded it, smoothing out the creases to find the bright yellow surface covered with Levi's handwriting. 

GIVE TO ERWIN ON OCTOBER 14TH. THAT'S HIS BIRTHDAY!

A reminder, from the past to the future, and Erwin smiled, setting the sticky on the tray, and resolved to pin it into the scrapbook at some point. 

He unfolded the paper, soft crinkling noises mixing with the crunching sounds of the toast in Levi's mouth. 

_"Dear Erwin."_ The R in his name was backwards, as usual, and Erwin traced it now with a finger. _"Happy Birthday! How old are you now? It seems like I've known you forever and yet not at all."_

"What does it say?" Levi wanted to know, curious, dropping crumbs all over the sheets. He craned his neck, tilting his head to try and read it. "Whoever wrote it has really, really messy handwriting." 

Erwin stifled a laugh. 

"I'll read it out loud," he promised, and started from the beginning. 

_ "Dear Erwin, happy birthday! How old are you now? It seems like I've known you forever and yet not at all. Anyway, I just want to tell you that, even if I forget, these are the things I love most about you.  _

_ 1\. The way you laugh, and the way you don't try to hide your uphoria (did I spell this right? I tried to look it up but the letters in the word book keep swimming away from me.) behind the curve of your hand.  _

_ 2\. The way your voice kind of sounds like the wind when you tell me that you love me, too, even though by all logic you probably shouldn't. I'm glad you do, anyway. Also, the way you tell me to be brave when you think I'm not listening, when you think I won't remember, because you know I can be.* _

_ 3\. When you watched the Perseids shower with me that night, and I told you to make a wish. You made the stars bleed and streak silver across the sky like so many diamond sorrows, and I loved it, adored it, because even though you didn't tell me what you wished for, I knew you were wishing for me. _

_ Affectionately, yours. _

_ Levi Ackerman, Ph.D. _

 

_ *Did you say this? Or did I make it up?"  _

 

"Did I write that?" Levi asked, awed, from beside him. His face swum in and out of Erwin's vision, tears that he breathed deeply back in, salty, to run down the back of his throat. "Really? Or maybe someone else did with the same name." 

"You wrote this," Erwin said, smile breaking in fragments. "I love it. Thank you so much." 

"My writing's gotten messy," Levi murmured against Erwin's shoulder, as Erwin wrapped him in a hug and tried not to cry all over the shoulder of Levi's nightshirt. "And I don't remember writing it at all. But I'm glad you're happy." His hand came up to pat Erwin on the back, soft soothing circles, as the current came and swallowed him whole. 

 


	35. Again, Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to the Alzheimer's Association guidelines for caretakers, factors that can contribute to incontinence in Alzheimer's patients include: not being able to find the bathroom, difficulty removing clothing, and being unable to verbalize what they need (hence: "I can't find the light.")
> 
> In addition, choice is emphasized as a large part of the caretaking process, and it is important to ensure that the patient is still involved in their daily routine. 
> 
> If I am misunderstanding any of this or if it's just blatantly wrong, please don't hesitate to tell me!

Something was different about Levi that morning when he woke up, and though Erwin had learned to count these errors as normalities, he couldn't figure out what the problem was exactly. 

Levi had switched over into forty-three that morning at midnight, a year gone. 

Christmas dawned, bright and sunny like Levi's eyes weren't. He rolled over, frowned at Erwin, his mouth stuttering around silent syllables before he shook his head, squeezing his eyes tight together into narrow slits, and pulled himself out of bed. 

He stood up uncertainly, his silhouette outlined crisp and clear against the window, testing out unsteady legs taking unstable steps towards the bathroom. It was a path he'd woven into the floor for ages and ages, weeks and months and years of the same routine. 

And yet. 

The disease had no qualms about it, had no problems with the memories it cherry picked to rip away, and Erwin watched, crippled, as Levi wandered over to the small hallway connecting their bedroom and bathroom, peeking in.

"I can't find the light," he said, the syllables quivering. "I can't find the light."

"What's that, love?" Erwin asked, propping himself up on his elbow and automatically reaching over for his glasses on the nightstand. "What can't you find?"

"The light." Levi's voice was almost frantic now, his hands twisting themselves together, wringing anxious. "I can't find the light!" 

"What light?" Erwin pulled himself out of bed, wincing at the chill of the hardwood against the soles of his bare feet. It was chilly, December frost creeping in to trace icy fingers on the windowpanes, and Erwin shivered, rubbing his hands up and down his arms. Levi seemed unperturbed by the cold, seemed to be more preoccupied with bouncing between the balls of his feet, his eyebrows furrowed. 

"The light, the light, the light," Levi babbled, his eyes darting around nervously. He wasn't wearing his glasses, hadn't put them on, and Erwin noted how young it made him look, nervous, vulnerable, the slender column of his neck turned so Erwin could almost see the frantic tattoo of Levi's pulse as he turned to look down the hallway. "I need to find the light, please." 

Levi's hands were balled into fists, curled nervously in the too-thin fabric of his pajama pants, the skin of his arms rippled with goosebumps. He shuddered, bouncing from one foot to the other, and the last silky cobwebs of sleep fled out of Erwin's mind as he realized the gesture for what it was. 

"Oh. Ohhh, the light, of course," he murmured, grasping Levi's wrist and tugging him gently towards the toilet. 

Levi's fingers fiddled nervously, quickly, slipping over and around each other as he tugged at the drawstrings on his plaid pajama pants fruitlessly. He looked at Erwin, helpless, tears starting to gloss his eyes over with silk, and Erwin reached over, fingers still clumsy with sleep and fiddling with the bow and loose knot of Levi's pants. Working quick, working fast, and yet Levi's sobs tore through the frantic pulse in Erwin's ears, not quick enough, plaid cotton darkening and dampening beneath his fingertips, acrid and bitter. 

"Oh, Levi." Erwin's voice was soft, syllables gentle. Levi was crying, his fingers pressed against his eyes, body shuddering out of his control. "Don't cry, it's alright, sweetness, shh, shh." 

He soothed Levi down, helping him out of his wet clothes and puddling them in a heap in the sink, turning the tap on to soak them through to get the worst out before he would toss them in the laundry machine later. 

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Levi burbled, babbling, wet and half-naked in the center of the bathroom, feet pale against the tiles. "I didn't mean it, really, I didn't." 

"I know, darling," Erwin murmured, reaching down gently to unbutton Levi's nightshirt, tossing it off his shoulders to flutter on the floor like pale leaves in a dying winter. "Do you want to have a bath or a shower?" 

Levi's eyebrows furrowed, sidetracked and distracted for the moment. "Bath, or shower?" he repeated slowly, mulling the words over in his mouth. His skin was pebbled with goosebumps, nipples dark like bruises across his chest in the chill. "Shower, or bath...?"

"Shower." Erwin pointed behind him, to where the shower stall stood, glass door still closed. "Bath." He indicated the porcelain tub to the side of the bathroom. "Do you want to sit or stand?" 

Levi's eyes brightened, cleared. "Sit," he declared, and Erwin smiled softly as he herded Levi towards the tub. 

* * *

 

"Who gave me this?" Levi had asked him one week ago, nudging Erwin awake with his elbow. Erwin had mumbled something, five more minutes, but Levi didn't, wouldn't, couldn't wait five more minutes, and he had continued to prod Erwin awake until he had admitted defeat and risen up, fumbling for his glasses, to look at Levi. 

"Give you what?" he'd asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and yawning. 

"This." Levi had been twisting his ring around and around on his finger, the gold smooth against his skin. "Who gave me this?" 

Erwin's breath had caught in his throat. 

"I did," he had murmured, wondering if there was even the slightest doubt in Levi's gossamer mind. "I gave that to you." 

"No, you didn't." Levi had shaken his head, bangs falling in his eyes. Erwin had admired the shadow his hair had cast on his cheeks, fluttering, flickering, growing long, because his body knew, remembered, what to do, even when his mind was falling apart. "I would have remembered. Who gave it to me?" 

Erwin had been defeated. "Someone you love." He had bitten his tongue, bitten off the urge to turn the verb into past tense. 

Levi had fallen silent, perhaps unbelieving, perhaps uncomprehending, and had gone back to twirling the ring curiously around his finger, his eyes tracking the golden gleam. 

* * *

 

The water roared into the tub, gushing, splashing, splattering against the porcelain, and Erwin dipped his hand into the tub to check the temperature, warm against his skin. Steam rose up from the surface of the water, fragrant with the scent of soap Erwin poured in by the capful, the water bubbling and foaming white and pure. 

"Come here," he asked, his voice gentle, a quiet demand, and Levi, trusting, placed his hand in Erwin's and allowed him to help him into the tub. He settled himself down into the water, the foam reaching up to kiss the sweeps of his collarbones. "There. Doesn't that feel better? And, before I forget, happy birthday and Merry Christmas, hugs and kisses."

Levi hummed, a smile tilting its way over his mouth, a soft flush crawling up his neck from the warm water. "Yeah," he murmured. "Thanks. It's not my birthday, though." 

Erwin smiled helplessly, soft victories, and leaned over to steal a kiss back from the universe, Levi's mouth soft and yielding against his own. 

He turned around to get a pair of soft washcloths from the cabinet, and handed one of the cloths to Levi. Levi reached up out of the water, the soapy suds clinging to the underside of his arm, and as he took the cloth from Erwin, a sort of sick wrenching feeling crawled through Erwin's chest, tightness, as he found himself seeking out, and not finding, the gleam of gold on Levi's finger. 

"Levi?" he asked quietly, trying to swallow around the sadness that had suddenly made his syllables heavy as stones. "Where's your ring?" 

"My what?" Levi asked, already rubbing the washcloth over his arms and turning them milkier with froth. 

"Your ring, Levi. You know, the gold thing you wear on your hand. You never take it off." Panic settled in, rough and thick and frightening, and Erwin hated the taste. 

"I've no idea what you're talking about," Levi murmured, shrugging and not meeting Erwin's eyes, rubbing the washcloth over his chest and the hollows of his collarbones, leaving streaks of soap in his wake. 

Erwin breathed, his chest tight, slowly, steadily, trying to calm himself down. Surely it didn't mean anything, he told himself firmly, Levi forgot where he put things all the time, and Erwin kept finding pens in the utensils drawer in the kitchen, boxes of crackers in the recesses of his closet. 

But Erwin couldn't remember a single time when Levi had ever taken off his wedding ring, and this gesture frightened him beyond words. 

_Don't panic,_ he told himself firmly. _Don't panic. Levi doesn't need that. You knew this might happen. Don't pretend like you didn't._

Levi got out of the tub reluctantly half an hour later, his skin wrinkling underneath the fluffy bath towel Erwin wrapped him in, drying each limb slowly, softly, tenderly, wondering the entire time if this is what it felt like to take care of a child, grasping at a fatherhood he might never experience again. The instant Levi had wandered off, dressed in thicker flannel pajamas checkered in red and blue, Erwin plunged his arm into the sudsy water, cooling already around his flesh and his cotton shirtsleeve that he'd neglected to roll up, fingers scrabbling around the slick bottom, hoping, praying he'd find a gleaming circle of gold. 

His fingers crawled along every inch of porcelain, water sluicing onto the floor in his panic and desperation. His pulse was heavy, pounding in his ears, and his skin grew wet as he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, taking one breath, two, three, trying not to shatter apart and trying not to think about the implications of the gesture. 


	36. Again, Propose

The novelty tie this year was one in bright teal, puffy red boats skimming along the water and leaving white slipstreams in their wake, their canvas sails filled with wind and sailors' dreams. Levi unwrapped it with glee, the pieces of paper ripping underneath his long, lagging fingers, shreds of snowmen and reindeer and Christmas trees spilling into the air.

"God, this is hideous," Levi chirped, heartbreakingly happy, heartbreakingly familiar, and he wound the tie around his neck, fumbling with the fabric. The knot he made was clumsy, loose around the edges, and Erwin reached out to straighten it for him, all too aware of Levi's bare hands. He was jittery, shaking apart at the seams, and his cheeks ached from the smile he'd pasted on. 

Levi seemed to have no recollection of the morning's incident, swaddled in flannel, humming to himself as he tore through the wrapping paper with ferocity, colorful pieces flying everywhere. He was happy, euphoria like he hadn't known how to describe in words, but the knowledge didn't stop Erwin's hand from shaking as he clicked on his phone to take a picture, already composing the caption in his head. 

_ Today is Christmas. It is your forty-third birthday, and I am afraid you will not be here to see forty-four.  _

No. Erwin shook his head, cursing himself and his wicked mind. 

Levi was looking at him curiously when he looked back up, slotting his phone away. "What's wrong?" he asked, eyebrows furrowed, hands slack over the calendar he was currently in the middle of unwrapping. This year had been soap bubbles, rainbows gossamer and barely there along the slick sheened surface, fragile and delicate and beautiful for the moments they lasted, holding their breaths. "Are you feeling alright?"

"Yeah, sorry, I've just got a headache," Erwin explained, frowning at how easily the lie came to his tongue. "You keep going, though. You've got quite a bit of presents to go, and the living room isn't quite covered with wrapping paper yet." 

Levi smiled happily, easy to reassure, worry fading away as quickly as it had come. He turned back to his present task, fingers fumbling over each other as they picked at the tape and tore apart the paper. 

Today is Christmas. It is your forty-third birthday. Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas, hugs and kisses, Levi! Despite how neat you are all the time, Christmas seems like a different day to you where none of the usual rules apply. You always shred through the wrapping paper like a demon, so days later, we'll sit down on the couch and hear the cushions crinkling underneath us. You'll reach into them and pull out a shred of snowman. This will happen for weeks. 

"Maybe you should take a pain pill," Levi informed him, and Erwin jolted out of his reverie. He looked at Levi for a moment, confused. Levi rolled his eyes, pausing his furious unwrapping for a moment, just long enough to remind Erwin that he had a headache, and that pain pills were good for those. 

"Oh. Right. Of course," Erwin mumbled, pinching at the bridge of his nose. "Maybe I'll have one later. I wouldn't want to miss a single moment of this." He gestured around the living room, snowdrifts of paper and unwrapped gifts scattered around like the sunbeam rays of Levi's happiness. 

Levi set the chenille blanket he was halfway through unwrapping down on the coffee table, turning to look at Erwin, narrowing his eyes in scrutiny. The soft green yarn spilled out of the paper, silky to the touch, and Levi's hands absentmindedly stroked over it as he studied Erwin, eyes flickering over his face, seeing, reading, drinking him in with every measured breath. 

"I have something to give you," he announced, abruptly, jerkily heaving himself off of the couch. The blanket spilled to the floor, green knit a mass of meadow over the carpet. Erwin picked it up absentmindedly, stroking away the bits of wrapping paper that clung to its surface.

_ You always sleep with blankets, or read with them, even if it's summer and a million degrees outside. You told me you liked the weight of them, how they made you feel safe. Much like I couldn't.  _

"Here." Levi pushed a box into his hands, small, clumsily wrapped, the tape half affixed and the fringes of wrapping paper misaligned. Erwin admired the effort anyway, charming as it was, and he smiled as Levi sat down proudly, falling back into the couch cushions, taking the blanket back and slipping off the rest of its wrapping to wind it around himself. "Open it!" He was bouncing up and down, almost vibrating with excitement as Erwin slipped a finger underneath a flap of paper and pulled upwards. The sharp rip of the paper had Levi giggling, overflowing, and Erwin couldn't help but laugh, pretend headache and worry starting to drift away. 

The little white cardboard box he held in his hands was nondescript, the lid slightly glossy and smooth beneath his fingertips. He looked at Levi curiously; Levi's hands were cupped over his mouth, presumably to hold in his glee. 

_ When did you find the time to buy me a present? You are far too beautiful to love a broken man, you are far too beautiful to love me, and I am undeserving. I have been from the very beginning.  _

"Open it, open it!" Levi's entreaties grew louder, a hint of desperation starting to sink in, and Erwin hastened to open the box. 

A golden ring lay at the bottom of the box, a gleaming circle, and Erwin's breath caught in his throat. 

"Marry me?" Levi couldn't contain himself any longer, and slid himself down beside Erwin on the floor, plucking the golden ring out of its ivory container and reaching down to fumble for Erwin's hand. "You'll say yes." The statement was definitive, Levi tracing over the strings of his heart with ease as though he'd been born to read them, and yet he still looked up at Erwin, unsure, unsteady. Asking. 

"Yes," Erwin breathed, stunned. "I...Did you plan this?" 

Levi, whose brows were furrowed as he tried to press the ring onto Erwin's ring finger, looked back up at him. "What?" 

"Did you plan this?" Erwin repeated, soft, patient, as he took the ring from Levi's slackening fingers. 

"Well, of course!" Levi protested, rolling his eyes dramatically. Erwin had to bite back a smile. "I wanted you to marry me, so I had to plan it, didn't I? Except your fingers are too damn big." 

_ You proposed to me today. I said yes, even though we've been married for so long it feels as natural as breathing. I'll always say yes to you. _

Erwin leaned over to press a kiss to Levi's forehead. 

"Let's try something, okay?" he murmured, breath stirring soft strands of silver. "Humor me."

"Try something?" Levi asked, confused, as Erwin motioned for him to get back onto the sofa. "Wait, are you saying no?" Levi's breath stuck, jagged in his chest, and Erwin hastened to soothe him. 

_ You've unmade me, and I no longer know how to refuse your entreaties. _

"No, no, of course not, don't be silly." Erwin took a deep breath, legs aching against the floor as he propped himself up on bent knee and held out the ring to Levi. "It's just I think this will look a lot better on you. If you'll let me." 

Levi sat, rapt, breathless, eyes tracking Erwin's every move as he nodded. His teeth worried at his lower lip, sitting, vibrating with an altogether different sort of excitement. 

"So. Levi. Will you marry me?" Erwin asked, smiling up at him, holding out the ring, the gold smooth and comforting in his fingers. "Please say yes, darling." 

"Yes," Levi breathed, eyes wide with wonder as Erwin smiled, picked up his left hand, and slid the ring onto his finger to rest where it had for the past years. 

_ We've never had a real proposal, do you know that? I just remembered now. The first time I tried, you nearly threw your champagne all over me.  _

Levi lifted his hand up in front of his face, watching, wondrous, as the gold glimmered against his skin in the winter sunlight. 

"It fits well," Levi admitted after a moment, his face breaking into a smile. 

"Yes," Erwin agreed as he hauled himself up onto the couch beside Levi, cushions crinkling beneath them. "Yes, it fits perfectly." 

Levi graciously allowed Erwin to wrap the green blanket around both of them as he picked up another present, delighted. The sounds of ripping resumed, shreds of wrapping paper flying through the air. 

_ I can't wait until this blanket picks up the memory of you, citrus and sleep and fresh linen woven through every thread. It'll make me feel safe for when you're gone, but don't leave me too soon. Okay? _

* * *

 

"How does that story end?" Levi asked later that night, curled comma in Erwin's arms, the couch cushions crinkling beneath them with every breath. 

Erwin, who had been half asleep already, jolted out of the beginning of his dreams. 

"What story?" he asked, mumbling, mouthing a kiss to the seashell curve of Levi's ear. 

"The one with all those pictures." 

"Oh." The scrapbook had started to fill, less slowly now, its pages still weighted heavy with the memories of decades of lives spent together and intertwined. The piles of pictures that Erwin had printed had diminished, just a few left to remember and sort into the book, and, truthfully, Erwin was putting it off because it felt too final, it felt like a solid punch to the stomach, it felt like a defeat that he'd already swallowed and found he hated the taste of. 

He took a deep breath. "It ends happily." 

"Oh?" Levi leaned back into him, hair tickling against his pulse, smiling against his neck. "I'm glad." Words felt more than heard, and Erwin savored the feeling against his skin, praying every moment that the syllables rang sincere. 

"Happy birthday and Merry Christmas, hugs and kisses," Erwin murmured gently, stroking slow circles into Levi's back. Levi's breathing slowed, evening out, steady beneath Erwin's palm. "You are forty-three today, and I love you more with every passing morning. Thank you for saying yes, for every time you've said it."

Levi fell into his dreams headlong, with the abandon of someone several years younger, and Erwin finally allowed himself to join him. 

"See you tomorrow." 


	37. Again, Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, guys. This is it. Thank you so much for staying out the entire time with me! I hope this work has been fairly accurate, I hope you've learned something you might not have known before, I hope it's influenced you in any small way possible. 
> 
> Below are a few different endings for the work. Remember to tell me which one you like the most! (ending 3 credit goes to ephieshine)
> 
> Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas, hugs and kisses for all of you.  
> Misaya

**(ORIGINAL ENDING)**

* * *

 

Erwin woke up the next morning, back aching from the couch cushions, Levi warm and heavy against him, his breathing hot puffs against his skin. As he shifted, twinging, trying to relocate them to a more comfortable part of the couch, Levi's head jolted up, knocked out of his dreams, and Erwin looked down to find Levi staring back at him, confused, angry, terrified. 

He didn't recognize him at all, Erwin realized, didn't remember, couldn't, and Levi pushed away from him to scuttle to the other edge of the couch, cushions crinkling beneath him with the scraps of wrapping paper Erwin had been far too tired to clean up last night. The green chenille blanket dripped to the floor, puddling viridian beneath Erwin's fingertips as he leaned over the edge of the couch to pick it up, his muscles protesting with every breath. 

"Don't you remember me?" he asked, tiredly, wearily. 

"No." Levi's tone was definitive, waxing mercurial with every syllable, cautious as he studied Erwin. Erwin took a customary glance at Levi's hand, where he found the gold mildly reassuring, a bracing comfort against the frightening storm of Levi's words and angry silences. "Who are you?" Every word was punctuated with distrust, fear, and Erwin sighed, burying his face in his hands and running his fingers through his hair, strands of grey. 

"My name is Erwin Smith," he replied after a moment. "I'm your husband." 

"Prove it." Levi's breath was racing, hysterical in his chest, a need for substantiation that Erwin had never found cause to prepare for. "We can't be married if I've never seen you before in my life." 

Levi's accusations cut him to the quick, desperate and fearful in the exquisite burst of their agony, and with a quiet plea for him to stay, Erwin all but ran upstairs, his footsteps pounding against the hardwood as he skidded into their bedroom, breathless. His heartbeat thudded, slowed, steadying in his ears as he tugged the scrapbook out from the nightstand drawer, heavy with the weight of their memories captured in glossy photographer paper and curling blue and black script. Its heft was reassuring in his hands, proof, so much of it, glorious and beautiful against his palms. 

Levi, much to his relief, was still waiting for him. Levi, much to his disappointment, still shied away from him when Erwin plopped down on the couch, cushions crinkling beneath his weight, and he berated himself for perhaps allowing himself to hope that something might have changed in the small infinity he'd been gone. 

"Look," he murmured, opening the scrapbook to the first page. The first picture. Day zero, Levi at twenty-something, asleep, lying half on and off their old broken couch with the leaking cushions and squeaky springs, a book open across his belly. "This isn't the first time I met you, but how was I supposed to know that the man I spilled coffee on would one day end up being the greatest love of my life?"

Levi stilled, his fingers reaching out for the scrapbook, tracing across the indentations of Erwin's handwriting on the pages, skimming along the glossy surfaces of the photographs they had slotted in together. Erwin allowed him to take the scrapbook, watched as he flipped through the pages rapturously, awe as his eyes flicked over the pictures. 

He turned back to Erwin, studying him now, carefully, closely, eyes flicking from the glossy surfaces to his face and back again, and Erwin could almost see the trust leaching back into his gaze, a quiet series of possibilities finding treacherous footsteps over the rickety bridge of his mind. 

He handed the scrapbook back to Erwin, flipping to the first page again. 

"Please read it to me. I can't." 

Erwin took the book back from him, fingers brushing, and he was intensely gratified to find that Levi didn't jerk away. Learning how to dance around each other again, comfortable. 

He cleared his throat. With the soft, undemanding patience of someone who had already begun the story several times, and the steady, loving perseverance of someone who knew they'd have to do it again and again and again, Erwin began. 

"You are perfect. Almost terrifyingly so. But, mornings like this, where you can't remember my name, where you can't remember my face, where you can't remember the way you and I make us, it's easy to forget that.

Your name is Levi Ackerman. You are forty-three years old, and I love you desperately."

 

 

 

 

 

**Ending 2  (AGAIN, LOVE: À DEUX)**

* * *

 

Erwin woke up the next morning, his back twinging, aching, Levi heavy against him. Even before he was fully awake, Erwin knew, already knew with a frightening intensity, that sometime during the night, the shipwreck had been swept away, the raging tides carrying it away to a distant horizon. 

Erwin prayed it was beautiful. 

"Levi." He tasted the name in his mouth, rolled it around his tongue, again, again, again, to try to keep himself afloat. He'd prepared for this, he knew it would have happened eventually, but no amount of preparation could stop the taste of salt from wetting his tongue. 

Levi's eyes were closed, soft, still, cheek cool against Erwin's fingertip as he tilted his face up to look, drinking in every wrinkle and every mark of crows' feet that lined his eyes. 

Levi was silent, still, and Erwin hugged him tightly, shuddering as the tears swept down his face, wetting the shoulder of Levi's flannel nightshirt. The green chenille blanket, the one that hadn't had enough time to pick up the memory of Levi's scent, slipped off Levi's limp legs, puddling viridian on the floor. The threads caught the warmth and shadows of the sunlight creeping across the room, light, light, bright fading into darkness.

"I'll call tomorrow," Erwin promised, sobs hitching at his syllables, hands stroking fervently through the silky strands of Levi's black and silver hair, fingertips straining to memorize the touch. 

"I love you," he whispered, the words melting into each other with every broken gasp. "I love you devastatingly." 

* * *

 

The coroner's dark eyes were filled with pity. Erwin's had steadied, growing used to the silences that Levi no longer filled, growing used to the fact that he woke up to an empty mattress and the lingering memory of Levi's laughter winding its way through his dreams. 

"Cerebral aneurysm," she murmured, softly. "A massive one. Did he mention headaches or nausea, dizzy spells, anything like that?" 

No, not that Erwin could recall. Would it have mattered? Probably not. 

She patted his arm, a weak comfort. "I'm sorry for your loss." 

Sorry? His hands didn't make sense to him anymore, trying to figure out who he was without Levi, trying to get through it one agonizingly slow day at a time. 

Empty house, the color leaching out moment by moment by infinitely frustrating everlasting moment. Empty arms, coiled around pillows that still smelled like Levi. 

It takes a year for Erwin to come back, and he emerges, grey cocoon, old already, to thumb through the scrapbook one last time. 

He takes a deep breath.

"This is how it ends. You leave me in a whirlwind of extricated promises of brighter tomorrows. You leave me for the next life in a flurry, half-finished, but, Levi? I'm glad you loved me enough to stay around for so long, over twenty lovely, glorious years." 

At that moment, he is sure, Levi is being taken apart and reassembled, skin falling pale to the scalpel. Perhaps he already has been. Ribs pried apart, fingers separated to twitch the muscles of his wrist, brain examined and memories dissected. The golden ring hangs heavy, cool, smooth against Erwin's chest, but the albatross is starting to grow wings and fly away, because Erwin can't help but feel a quiet sort of gratification that Levi's departure had been an easy one. Quick. Breathless in its intensity, sweeping him away out of Erwin's grasp, the universe finally deciding it had had enough. 

A thief, and a deliverer of mercy. 

Levi will not have lived to see forty-four, will not have lived to fill the last few pages of the scrapbook, but he also will not have lived to lose his words and the sensory remembrances of Erwin's arms around him. 

Even now, students at the university may be examining the body donor card Erwin had filled out for him, pen shaking as the words forced their way out. 

"Please treat me well. I was -" He'd frozen, before crossing it out definitively. "I am loved." 

December twenty-fifth had rolled around again, the year creeping by excruciating in its silence. Erwin lifted the golden ring from its chain around his neck, smooth circlet gleaming in the pale morning light, weighing it calmly in his hand. 

"Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas, hugs and kisses," he murmured softly, lips twitching against the gold. "You are forty-four today, and I love you eternally." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

** Ending 3  **

Erwin woke up to Levi shaking him. He cracked his eyes open, still blurry with the fog of his dreams. 

Levi's breathing was rapid, quicksilver, eyes fevered as they darted around Erwin's face, drifting in and out of focus. 

"Light," he was mumbling, over and over and over again, a mantra, a tattoo beating a pulse inside Erwin's head. "Need light." 

Erwin's back twinged as he sat up, aching. "The bathroom?" he asked blearily, pinching at the bridge of his nose to stave off the tension migraine he could feel building in the back of his skull. 

Levi shook his head, almost violently. "No." His voice had taken on a hint of desperation. "White, Erwin," he repeated, emphasis. His syllables were slurred together, one word blending flawless into the next, a liquid poetry of sound, and erwin looked at him, really looked, to find Levi's left eye drifting shut, the corner of his mouth tracing down. 

"Oh," he breathed, his hand reaching for his phone on the coffee table. "Oh, oh, Levi." 

His fingers dialed 911 automatically, but his thumb hesitated over the call button, a second, a moment, a minute stretching into infinities too long as the universe closed its grip around his heart, impatient, ripping Levi away. 

* * *

_Dear Levi._ His fingers were shaking as he uncapped the ballpoint pen and filled in the last text area available on the last page of the scrapbook. 

_ This is the last memory I will have with you. You wake me up at 9:42 AM on December 26th, and I lose you at 9:47. Your eyelids were soft against my thumbs as I closed them for you, because you don't need to carry the sight of my weakness with you into wherever you go from here. The universe carries you away in a soft grasp, restless and needing the incandescent sweetness of your soul and your smile.It cannot wait a single second longer, and begs me to still my hand.  _

_ I complied, darling, and I hope you can understand why. You would have hated it, fading away more with every passing day, knowing you'd wither and shredding away the bark of dignity for every memory and every emotion and every word you lose. But, like this, you leave me with my name written across your lips, the very memory of it and you and us bearing you away into the next experiences, and I can only pray the same will be true for me.  _

_ You don't adore beautiful things because they last forever, and you have never looked more gorgeous. You are forty-three years old, and I love you frighteningly, enough to let you leave me. _

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

** ENDING 4: AGAIN, LOVE (REDUX) **

The headstone was purely ornamental. Levi's body will not be found buried beneath the soil; per his wishes, it has already been donated to the university for research purposes. 

Levi Ackerman, it read. Beloved husband. Erwin's fingers know every etching well, and the stone greeted them like old friends. 

Levi had passed months ago, his last words telling Erwin to be good and not worry too much, before he slipped easily from one life into the next, and Erwin never failed to thank the universe for indulging him in just that one last little vestige of clarity. Levi had died with Erwin's name on his lips and peace slackening his mouth into a smile, the monitors in the hospital room flatlining with his sigh, the wings of freedom carrying him home, away from the pain of the pneumonia that had seized him by storm in four weeks' time. 

Erwin had squeezed his hand tight, had sat there, rigid, still, muscles growing stiff and cramped, until Levi's hand had gone cold in his own. 

"I love you, ruinously," he had whispered, voice choked, his words falling flat on the tiles. Ruined. Devastated. Overwhelmed. There weren't words to describe it, and Erwin had stopped trying to, long ago. 

"Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas, hugs and kisses," he informed the headstone. "You are forty-four years old today." 

The scrapbook was heavy in his arms; he had brought himself to finally fill out the last few pages with photographs from his phone. Levi, Levi, Levi. He smiled fondly at the glossy pictures, reaching out and allowing himself just a short brush across the pale hollow of a cheek. 

He settled himself in front of the headstone, reaching out for another fond stroke of the curling script in the marble. 

"It starts like this, Levi. We meet for the first time when I spill coffee all over you. I don't know at that moment that you're perfect, almost terrifyingly so, but you will give me years, beautiful decades, to learn." 

His voice read steady, the pages flipping from one to another, following the numbers next to the pictures for the chronological arrangement, a history rich in love and laughter, just like Levi had promised him on their wedding day. 

He had set the book down carefully for a moment, to take a sip from a bottle of water he'd put in his bag, when something bumped into him from behind. 

"Hey! You'd better apologize right now, mister!" 

A bright voice, familiar almost, and he turned to look. 

She was flushed, her soft brown hair curling around her face and escaping from the bun she'd put it up in earlier, a tie-dyed tote bag slung over her shoulder as she hurried towards him and the child, no more than five, who had run into him, a bundle of puffy blue against the December chill who was already starting to whimper. 

She huffed as she reached down to pick up the child, smiling apologetically at Erwin. Their eyes met. Hers widened. 

"Oh! You're...you're Erwin." Her voice was breathless, a grin sneaking its way across her face. "Right?" 

"Exactly right," he agreed, standing up and brushing the dirt off the seat of his jeans. "Sasha, was it? You kept the baby." The baby in question peeked at him from around the curve of his mother's cheek, before ducking his head back into her neck. 

"Yeah." Her laughter was refreshing in the peaceful silence. "Lucy turned out to be a Levi, and they gave him to me to hold afterwards, and I couldn't bring myself to do it." 

Erwin's heart skipped a beat. 

"Speaking of, where is...?" Her voice trailed off as her brown eyes flicked over to the marble headstone Erwin had been sitting in front of. "Oh." Eyes widening, apologetic. "I'm so sorry. How are you holding up?"

"I'm holding," Erwin replied, truthfully. Holding up, holding on. 

Levi peeked out from behind Sasha's cheek again, shy. 

"Say hi, you silly goose," Sasha said with a smile, hitching him up further on her hip. Shyly, slowly, sweetly, a mittened hand waved a greeting, the curve of a little mouth tilting upwards under Erwin's breathless gaze. 

The wispy embraces of the grey cocoon shake themselves off, powerless against the child's smile, and Erwin finds himself smiling, helplessly, wondrously, as the color starts to leak back into him again, drop by drop, filling his cracks with gold. 

 


	38. Glass Houses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artwork commissioned from 35grams/caxxe, used in story and on book cover with permission  
> Do not reuse, redistribute, repost without their consent, please~
> 
> [35grams on Tumblr](http://www.35grams.tumblr.com), check them out!

What a ride it's been, huh? even almost two months after it's been finished and I still think about this fic daily. 

At any rate, I've spent this past month or so cleaning it up for publishing/waiting for my proof copy to come, and it's finally arrived! To see pictures of what the book itself looks like, please refer to this post on my Tumblr: [Glass Houses Book](http://misayawriting.tumblr.com/post/129129780219/misayawriting-35grams-happy-birthday-and)  
You can purchase this story as a paperback book at the link below, $5.25 USD (shipping/handling not included). 

[Glass Houses on Lulu](http://www.lulu.com/shop/misaya/glass-houses/paperback/product-22341955.html)

And, as always, Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas, hugs and kisses. 

xoxo, M

 


End file.
